The World Cup

The more increasing competition and commercialization of Cricket led to a term called World Champions. The Cricket administrators and the fans around the world just wanted an undisputed World Champion side and hence they felt like conducting a tournament. Since 3-day, 4-day & 5-day games for a long tournament were hard to organize they shifted towards the limited overs format. So the World Cup (WC) was introduced as a 60-overs ODI tournament known by the name Prudental Cup (Prudental were the title sponsors of that tournament) which was to be held once in every 4 years!!!

1975 WC

Teams like Australia, England, South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand, India & Pakistan were supposed to play in the first World Cup but since South Africa were banned from Cricket for Apartheid they disqualified for this tournament. Sri Lanka and East Africa were invited as associate teams. The first edition of the World Cup was held in 1975 and since England was the only country that had facilities to organize the World Cup they became the host country. West Indies & Australia made it to the first World Cup Final with West Indies beating them by 17 runs at Lord's riding on skipper Clive Lloyd's century. Glenn Turner from New Zealand was the leading run-scorer while Gary Gilmour from Australia was the leading wicket-taker.

1979 WC

The teams that had played as full member nations in the 1975 WC got an automatic qualification while the other 2 teams Sri Lanka & Canada qualified through ICC Trophy 1979. Canada proved to be easy pushovers as they lost all their matches. Sri Lanka on the other hand did not have enough opportunities to qualify for the Semi-final because of their match against West Indies being washed out but they did beat India. Pakistan upset runners-up of 1975 WC- Australia by beating them in the group stage to reach the Semi-Finals. England had a very smooth sailing to the Final as they remained unbeaten till the Final. The defending Champions- West Indies also had a similar outing. Final match was a different-affair altogether. The West Indies hammered England after being reduced to 99/4. Vivian Richards scored 138 as West Indies scored 286/9 in their 50 overs. England never really recovered from that as they got bowled out on 194 losing the Final by 92 runs. Gordon Greenidge of  West Indies was the leading run scorer while Mike Hendrick of England was the leading wicket taker of the 1979 WC.

1983 WC

The 1983 World Cup proved to be more competitive than the previous editions of the World Cup. Sri Lanka participated in this World Cup as a full member nation. Zimbabwe joined the 7 other teams in World Cup after winning the 1982 ICC Trophy. The format of this tournament came up with a slight change as it become a double round-robin format unlike the previous editions where there was single round robin. Ahead of the World Cup, Australia's Kim Hughes surprised everyone with a statement that came as, "Kapil Dev's India look to be the dark horses to win the WC." Clearly surprising as India had only won 1 of their 10 games in the World Cup and failed to win even a single match in 1979 WC. 

This WC began with a couple of shockers as Zimbabwe beat Australia while defending Champions West Indies who never lost a game in the WC lost to India. India also beat Zimbabwe quite comprehensively winning 2 out of their 2 games but were handed huge defeats by Australia and West Indies in the 2nd cycle. They were 17/5 against Zimbabwe but recovered amidst a magnificent unbeaten 175 by the Indian Captain Kapil Dev. India won by a close margin of 31 runs. They beat Australia by 118 runs to claim a spot in the Semi-final. England, Pakistan and West Indies reached the semi-final with ease. A bigger surprise occurred when India knocked the hosts England out of the WC and making it to the Finals. West Indies just like 1979 WC knocked out Pakistan and reached the Finals.

India faced really tough to face the pace quartet of Holding, Garner, Roberts and Marshall well supported by spinner Larry Gomes. India were bowled out for 183! It looked like West Indies were going to make an hat-trick of winning the World Cups but Indian bowlers bowled really well and won the match by 43 runs. What an underdog story that! He would be surely happy does Kim Hughes who trusted this team to achieve the unachievable. David Gower from England scored the most runs while Roger Binny from India took most wickets.

1987 WC

The 1987 World Cup was the first World Cup that was hosted outside England. And it was the country of the defending Champions India and 1983 Semi-finalists Pakistan. Since the conditions in the subcontinent did not allow to host full 60-overs due to it getting dark pretty quickly, the overs were reduced to 50-overs. Unlike the previous WCs, India had dominated their opponents playing at home winning 5 of the 6 matches with one loss. Chetan Sharma from India took the first ever hat-trick in World Cup in a match against New Zealand. They got knocked out by England in the Semi-final. Australia beat Pakistan as Pakistan lost in the Semis in 3rd consecutive WC. Australia eventually beat England at the iconic Eden Gardens to win the WC and regained their supremacy in World Cricket under the leadership of Allan Border. Graham Gooch from England scored the most runs while Craig McDermott from Australia got most wickets.

1992 WC

The 1992 WC was a little different from the past editions. The big change about this tournament was that team used coloured jerseys instead of traditional whites and a white ball was used instead of red ball. There were also Day & Night matches conducted under floodlights. Everything just seemed similar to Kerry Packer's 1977 World Series Cricket. South Africa who were banned from Cricket for Apartheid in the 1970's made a comeback into this tournament making their first WC appearance. Instead of teams being separated into groups each team were drawn into a single leaderboard playing each other in round robin format with top 4 sides qualifying for Semi-Finals.

Since there were no reserve days coming into this tournament, there was a new rule that came into existence that made it possible to have revised targets for the teams chasing totals taking into account the most productive overs of teams batting first in the reduced number of overs.

This tournament resulted in an underdog Pakistan team winning just 1 of their 5 matches going on to win all their remaining matches and beating an unbeaten New Zealand team in the last group match and in the Semi-Finals. Wasim Akram's incredible bowling display in the Finals against England helped Pakistan win the 1992 WC This can be termed as one of the greatest comebacks in history of World Cups. 

The 2nd Semi-Final between South Africa and England resulted in a controversy. South Africa required 22 off 13 balls and a rain interruption occurred. This resulted in South Africa requiring 22 runs in just 1 ball!!!! The most productive Overs rule was heavily criticised and this lead to a development of new rule- D/L method (also known as Duckworth Lewis Method).