Cricket World Cup

The Cricket World Cup is the international championship of One Day International cricket. The event is organised by the sport’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, every four years. The first World Cup was organised in England in June 1975, with the first ODI cricket match having been played only four years earlier. A total of twenty teams have competed in the eleven editions of the tournament, with ten teams competing in the recent 2019 tournament. Australia has won the tournament five times, India and West Indies twice each, while Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England have won it once each.

About Cricket World Cup in brief

Summary Cricket World CupThe Cricket World Cup is the international championship of One Day International cricket. The event is organised by the sport’s governing body, the International Cricket Council, every four years. The first World Cup was organised in England in June 1975, with the first ODI cricket match having been played only four years earlier. A total of twenty teams have competed in the eleven editions of the tournament, with ten teams competing in the recent 2019 tournament. Australia has won the tournament five times, India and West Indies twice each, while Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England have won it once each. England are the current champions after winning the 2019 edition. The next tournament will be held in India in 2023. The tournament is one of the world’s most viewed sporting events and is considered the \”flagship event of the international cricket calendar\” by the ICC. The current format involves a qualification phase, which takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase. The 1975 tournament was held in England and officially known as the Prudential Cricket Cup after sponsors Prudcential. The 2019 tournament was hosted by England, only the only nation able to put forward the resources to put the event forward as an event of such magnitude at the time. The World Series Cricket competition was established in the late 1970s. It introduced many of the now commonplace features of One-Day International cricket, including coloured uniforms, matches played at night under floodlights with a white ball and dark sight screens, and, for television broadcasts, multiple camera angles to capture the angles of the players on the pitch.

In the early 1960s, English county cricket teams began playing a shortened version of cricket which only lasted for one day. Starting in 1962 with a four-team knockout competition called the Midlands Knock-Out Cup, and continuing with the inaugural Gillette Cup in 1963, one-day cricket grew in popularity in England. The first international cricket match was played between Canada and the United States, on 24 and 25 September 1844. Since then, international Test cricket has generally been organised as bilateral series: a multilateral Test tournament was not organised again until the triangular Asian Test Championship in 1999. Cricket was also included as an Olympic sport at the 1900 Paris Games, where Great Britain defeated France to win the gold medal. This was the only appearance of cricket at the Summer Olympics. The number of nations playing Test cricket increased gradually over time, with West Indies in 1928, New Zealand in 1930, India in 1932, and Pakistan in 1952. However, international cricket continued to be played as bilateral Test matches over three, four or five days. The last multilateral competition at international level was the 1912 Triangular Tournament, a Test cricket tournament played in England between all three Test-playing nations: England, Australia and South Africa. The best performance by a non-full-member team came when Kenya made the semi-finals of the 2003 tournament. In the late 70s, Kerry Packer established the rival World Series cricket competition.