Every Cricket World Cup

A rained-off Test and a new game

International cricket had been played for almost a century before anyone thought of a World Cup. The only earlier attempt at a multi-team tournament, the Triangular Tournament of 1912 between England, Australia and South Africa, was a series of Test matches ruined by one of the wettest English summers on record, and nobody tried again for decades.

The idea came back through one-day cricket. English counties began playing limited-overs matches in the early 1960s, and the Gillette Cup, from 1963, proved that a game finished in a day could fill grounds. The first one-day international was improvised in Melbourne in January 1971, when rain washed out the first days of a Test and the two sides played a 40-over match instead. Four years later the International Cricket Conference staged the first World Cup in England, sponsored by Prudential. It had eight teams, fifteen matches and a fortnight in June, and it was a success from the first day.

The West Indies years

The first two tournaments belonged to West Indies. Clive Lloyd's side won the 1975 finalat Lord's by 17 runs, after Lloyd's own hundred and five Australian run-outs, and retained the trophy in 1979with Viv Richards' 138 not out and Joel Garner's five wickets for four runs. By 1983 they were unbeaten in World Cup cricket and had the most feared fast-bowling attack in the world.

The 1983 finalis the tournament's great upset. India, priced at 66-1, defended 183, and a catch by their captain Kapil Dev to dismiss Richards turned the match. The result changed cricket's centre of gravity: within four years the World Cup had moved to India and Pakistan, and in 1987it became a 50-over tournament, as it has stayed. Allan Border's young Australian side won that final in Calcutta.

The World Cup goes global

The 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand looked like the modern game for the first time, with coloured clothing, a white ball and floodlit matches, and it welcomed South Africa back after 21 years of isolation. Pakistan, bowled out for 74 and saved by rain early in the tournament, won it under Imran Khan. The rain rule that left South Africa needing 21 from one ball in their semi-final led to the Duckworth-Lewis method.

In 1996, co-hosts Sri Lanka won with a new way of batting, attacking the first fifteen overs, and a tournament of twelve teams introduced quarter-finals. The field kept growing, through fourteen teams in 2003 to sixteen in 2007, as the ICC tried to give associate nations a place, and Kenya reached a semi-final in 2003. The trophy that is still presented today, a gold globe held up by three silver columns shaped like stumps and bails, was first awarded in 1999.

Qualifying changed with the field. From 1979 the places outside the Test nations were decided at the ICC Trophy, a tournament for associate members; later a World Cricket League and a qualifying tournament took over. For 2023, only the host qualified automatically, and every other side earned its place through a league or the qualifier, which is how West Indies came to miss a World Cup for the first time. The 2027 tournament will grow again, to fourteen teams.

Australia's long reign

From 1999 to 2007, Australia won three World Cups in a row. The run began with the tied semi-final at Edgbaston in 1999, where they went through on a better Super Six position, and continued with eleven wins from eleven matches in both 2003 and 2007. Ricky Ponting's 140 not out in the 2003 final and Adam Gilchrist's 149 in 2007 were the two great final innings of the era, and Glenn McGrath, who played in all three, finished with 71 World Cup wickets, still the record. Australia went more than thirty World Cup matches without defeat between 1999 and 2011.

The host-nation era

Until 2011, no side had won a World Cup final on home soil. Then three did in a row. India won in 2011, with MS Dhoni's six at the Wankhede and Sachin Tendulkar lifted onto his team-mates' shoulders at his sixth attempt. Australia won in 2015 in front of 93,013 people at the MCG. England won in 2019, in a final tied twice and settled on boundaries, which led the ICC to change the rules for tied super overs.

In 2023, India won their first ten matches at home and lost the final to an Australian side that had lost its first two, Travis Head making 137 in front of more than 92,000 in Ahmedabad. The tournament drew a record 1.25 million spectators, and Virat Kohli's 765 runs were the most ever in a single World Cup.

Who wins World Cups

Australia have won six of the thirteen. West Indies won the first two and have not reached a final since 1983. India have won twice, 28 years apart, and Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England once each. New Zealand have reached two finals and lost both, the second on boundaries.

The tournament also has a history of smaller teams beating larger ones: Zimbabwe over Australia in 1983, Kenya over West Indies in 1996, Ireland over Pakistan in 2007 and England in 2011, and Afghanistan's four wins in 2023. The scoring has changed as much as the format. The chart below shows the average first-innings total at each tournament: it sat between about 215 and 250 for thirty years, climbed from 2007, and reached its highest in 2023, when forty hundreds were scored.

Reading this archive

Every number on these pages is computed from the scorecards in CricArcade's ODI match archive, and every result links to its full scorecard. A handful of scheduled matches never started, because of rain or because a team refused to travel; they have no scorecard, and each tournament page lists them with the reason. The tables of the group stages are ordered by wins and do not reproduce the official points or run-rate tie-breaks. This archive covers the men's tournament only. The next World Cup, in 2027, will be played in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia, and it will be added once it has been played.