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The ICC Cricket World Cup is the premier international championship of one-day cricket in the world. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC) and is contested by all Test-playing nations (currently the only ten teams officially allowed to play the longest form and highest level of cricket), plus qualifiers. Since the inaugural championship in 1975, the championship is held around every four years. Similarly a Women's Cricket World Cup, since 1973, two years before the first men's competition, has been also held on a four-year schedule.
In the eight tournaments held so far, five teams have won. Australia, the current champions, is the most successful World Cup team, having won the tournament three times. West Indies won the first two tournaments while India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have won one each.
The most recent Cricket World Cup was held between 9 February and 24 March 2003, in Southern Africa, where Australia were crowned champions after beating India by 125 runs.• The next tournament will be held in the West Indies in 2007 and will consist of 16 teams.
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Prior to the Cricket World Cup
The first cricket Test match was played in 1877 between Australia and England. Cricket was contested at the 1900 Summer Olympics where Great Britain defeated France by 158 runs.• Yet from then on, The International Olympic Committee cancelled cricket as an Olympic sport.
The first attempt at an international cricket competition was the 1912 Triangular Tournament. It was a Test tournament played in England between the only three Test playing nations at the time, which were England, Australia and South Africa. Due to poor weather and a lack of public interest, the experiment was not repeated.•
In the early 1960s, English county cricket teams began playing a shortened version of cricket, which only lasted for one day. Starting in 1962 as a 4-team knockout competition known as the Midlands Knock-Out Cup,• and the Gillette Cup in 1963, one-day cricket grew in popularity and in 1969 a national league called the Sunday League was created. The first one-day international came about from a rain-aborted Test match at Melbourne between England and Australia in 1971 and was played on the final scheduled day. The forty (eight-ball) over match was used as a time filler as well as compensation for the frustrated crowd.• The success and popularity of the domestic one-day competitions in England and other parts of the world in addition to the early One-day international prompted the International Cricket Council to consider organising a Cricket World Cup.
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The Prudential World Cups
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The Cricket World Cup was first held in 1975 in England because it was the only nation at the time that had the resources to stage an event of such magnitude.• The first three tournaments were officially known as the Prudential Cup because the financial services company Prudential plc was the main sponsor in each event. Eight teams participated in the first tournament: Australia, England, the West Indies, Pakistan, India, and New Zealand (the six Test nations at the time), with Sri Lanka and a composite team from East Africa. One notable omission was the South African cricket team who were not competing due to the international sports boycott. West Indies won the first Cricket World Cup when they defeated Australia by 17 runs in a memorable final.
The next two World Cups held in 1979 and 1983 were again hosted by England. The 1979 tournament saw the introduction of the ICC Trophy, a competition used to determine which non-Test playing teams qualified for the World Cup.• West Indies again won the tournament, defeating England by 92 runs. The 1983 event was hosted by England for a third consecutive time. India were crowned champions after upsetting the West Indies by 43 runs in the final.
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1987 - present
The 1987 Cricket World Cup held in India and Pakistan was the first World Cup hosted outside of England. It was also the first tournament where the West Indies were unable to reach the final. Australia won the championship by defeating England by 7 runs, the closest margin so far in World Cup final history. The 1992 tournament held by Australia and New Zealand brought many changes to the game such as coloured clothing, white balls, day/night matches and an alteration to the fielding restrictions.•
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Qualification
Qualifying tournaments were introduced for the second World Cup where two of the eight places were contested in the ICC Trophy.[ The number of places decided from the ICC Trophy have constantly changed since its inception. It has depended on the number of teams participating in the tournament as well as the Test nations at the time. Currently, five places of the Cricket World Cup are selected from the ICC Trophy.]
In the current qualifying process, there are stages that precede the ICC Trophy so that all 81 Associate and Affiliate members of the ICC are able to qualify for the World Cup. The ICC states that there are five steps for the 81 Associate and Affiliate members to be selected for the World Cup.[ ] For some regions of the world, namely Africa, Europe and the Americas, the first stage of qualification is an Affiliate tournament. The next steps, which are for all regions of the world, are the final regional qualifying events. From the final regional events, eleven teams qualify directly for the ICC Trophy while many teams are still in contention. These teams that narrowly miss out on direct qualification for the ICC Trophy but are still in contention play in the ICC World Cup Qualifying Series. The winner of this event grabs the last spot in the ICC Trophy.[ ]
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In the past
The format of the Cricket World Cup has changed greatly over the course of its history. The first four tournaments comprised of eight teams each, divided into two groups of four. There were two stages, a group stage and a knockout stage. In the 1975 and 1979 Cricket World Cups, each team played a round-robin, while in the following two tournaments, each team played the rest in their group twice. The top two teams in each group advanced to the semi-finals and the winners of the semi-finals played against each other in the final.
South Africa returned to international cricket in 1991, which meant that nine teams participated in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. All teams were in one group and played each other once. The top four qualified for the knockout stage which was contested in similar fashion to the previous events. In the 1996 competition, the number of teams increased from nine to twelve and they were allocated into two groups again. The top four teams of each group qualified for the knockout stage this time, which also included quarter-finals.
The tournament in 1999 has a similar group stage format to its predecessor but there was a dramatic change in the second stage. A "Super Six" round replaced the quarter-finals. There were still two groups of six but only three teams from each group went into the subsequent stage. In the Super Six round, each qualifier from group A played with each qualifier from group B. The teams earned points from their wins in the Super Six and also brought points scored against the two other teams who qualified from the same group in the group stages. The top four teams from the Super Six entered into the semi-finals and the rest of the tournament followed in similar fashion to its predecessors. The 2003 event had a similar structure to the 1999 competition except that the number of participants rose to fourteen, which meant that there were now seven teams in each pool in the group stage. The Super Six qualifiers also carried forward one point for each win in the group stage against non-qualifiers, a complexity which was dropped for the next world cup.•
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2007 Cricket World Cup|The 2007 tournament in West Indies
The upcoming tournament in 2007 will feature 16 teams allocated into four groups of four. Eleven teams had one-day international status and automatically qualified for the tournament while the other five teams were selected from the ICC Trophy. Within each group, the teams will play each other in a round-robin format and the top two teams will advance to the "Super 8" round. The eight remaining teams will again play in a round-robin format, except that they will not play the other team that advanced from their respective group.• The top four teams from the Super 8 round will advance to the semi-finals and the winners of the semi-finals will then compete in the final.
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Trophy
The ICC Cricket World Cup Trophy is the prize presented to winners of the Cricket World Cup along with cash prizes. The current trophy was created for the 1999 championships and is the first permanent prize in the tournament's history.• A team of craftsmen from Garrad, the Crown Jewellers, designed and produced the trophy within two months in London.
The current trophy is 60 cm high, made from silver and gild and features a golden globe held up by three silver columns. The columns, shaped as stumps and bails, represents the three fundamental aspects of cricket: batting, bowling and fielding, while the globe characterises a cricket ball.• It is designed in platonic dimensions, so that it can be instantly recognised from any angle. The trophy weighs approximately 11 kilograms and has the names of the previous winners inscribed on its base. There is still room for another ten teams to have their name inscribed.
The actual trophy is always kept by the International Cricket Council but a replica, which is identical in all aspects apart from the inscription of the previous champions is awarded to the winning team and remains in their possession.
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Hosts
The International Cricket Council's executive committee vote for the hosts of the tournament after examining the bids made by the nations keen to hold a Cricket World Cup. All the events thus far have been held in nations in which cricket is a popular sport. With the exception of Bangladesh and the West Indies, every Test playing nation has at least once hosted or co-hosted a Cricket World Cup. Many of the tournaments have also been jointly hosted by nations from the same geographical region, such as South Asia in 1987 and 1996, Australasia in 1992 and Southern Africa in 2003.
England hosted the first three competitions. The ICC decided that England should host the first tournament because it was ready to put the resources needed in organising the inaugural event.[ India eagerly proposed that they should hold the third Cricket World Cup. In spite of this most of the ICC members believed England was a more suitable venue because longer period of daylight in June. This meant that a match could be completed in one day.][ ] The first competition hosted outside of England was the 1987 tournament, which was jointly held in India and Pakistan. A change in location led to a reduction in the number of overs from sixty to fifty in each innings because of the shorter duration of daylight.
From then on there was an unofficial rotation system so every cricket playing region of the world would have the chance the hold a Cricket World Cup about every twenty years. However, owing to the increasing power and role of the Asian nations, particularly India, this system has been tampered with somewhat. For example according to the rotation system, Australia and New Zealand should be hosts of the event in 2011.[ ][ ] Nevertheless, the subcontinent won the bid because of their promise of earning an extra US$ 400 million in profit.[ ]
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Teams Participations
Includes appearances in the upcoming 2007 World Cup.
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Summary of the World Cups
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Performance of teams
So far, 17 teams have competed in the Cricket World Cup at least once excluding qualifying tournaments. Of these, seven teams have taken part in every competition and only five have won. The West Indies won the first two, Australia won three and three have been won by South Asian teams. The West Indies and Australia are also the only nations to have won consecutive titles (West Indies: 1975 and 1979; Australia: 1999 and 2003). The most successful team that has not yet won the World Cup is England, who have been runners-up three times. The furthest a non-Test playing nation has ever reached is the semi-finals, achieved by Kenya in the 2003 tournament.
Interestingly, apart from Sri Lanka, who co-hosted the 1996 Cricket World Cup, no host has ever won the tournament. The closest a major host has been to achieve this feat was England in the second tournament in 1979 when they lost to the West Indies in the final. Barring this, many teams have still had their best or equal best result as hosts: England as finalists in 1979, New Zealand as semi-finalists in 1992, Sri Lanka as winners in 1996, Zimbabwe reaching the Super Six in 2003 and Kenya as semi-finalists in 2003.
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See also
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