1987 Cricket World Cup

The World Cup leaves England

India's win in 1983 had one immediate consequence. The Indian and Pakistani boards, working together for once, bid to host the next World Cup and won, breaking England's hold on the tournament. The event was sponsored by Reliance Industries and became the Reliance Cup, and it was spread across 21 grounds in two countries, fourteen in India and seven in Pakistan. For the first time, umpires from countries not involved in a match stood in it.

The subcontinent forced one lasting change. Days in October and November are much shorter than in an English June, and a 120-over match would not fit into the daylight. So each innings was cut to 50 overs, and it has been 50 overs at every World Cup since. The format otherwise followed 1983: eight teams, two groups of four, each side playing the others in its group twice, then semi-finals and a final at Eden Gardens in Calcutta.

One run in Madras

The tournament opened with the match that decided a great deal of what followed. At Chepauk in Madras, Australia made 270 for six against India, with Geoff Marsh scoring 110. India reached 207 for two and looked certain to win, then lost their way against Craig McDermott and Steve Waugh. Waugh bowled the final over with India needing six, and bowled Maninder Singh to win the match by one run. There was a postscript: a boundary by Dean Jones had been signalled as four and not six during Australia's innings, and the two runs were added to their total during the interval with India's agreement. Without them, the match would have been lost.

That result mattered because India and Australia went on to finish level at the top of Group A, each with five wins. India topped the group on run rate, and so the two sides were drawn into different semi-finals, India in Bombay and Australia in Lahore, against Pakistan.

Records, and a gesture

The group stage had plenty of batting. Viv Richards made 181 against Sri Lanka in Karachi, a new World Cup record, as West Indies reached 360 for four. In Nagpur, India's Chetan Sharma took the first hat-trick in World Cup history, bowling Ken Rutherford, Ian Smith and Ewen Chatfield in successive balls, and in the same match Sunil Gavaskar, who had batted through 60 overs for 36 in 1975, made the only one-day hundred of his career, from 88 balls.

West Indies, champions in 1975 and 1979 and finalists in 1983, did not reach the semi-finals. Their decisive defeat came against Pakistan in Lahore, where Pakistan needed two to win from the final ball. Courtney Walsh, about to bowl it, saw the non-striker Saleem Jaffar backing up well out of his ground. He could have run him out, and did not: he warned him instead. Abdul Qadir then hit the last ball for two, Pakistan won by one wicket, and West Indies were effectively out. Walsh's gesture cost his side the match, and it is still quoted whenever the law on running out a non-striker is argued about.

The hosts fall

The organisers, the sponsors and hundreds of millions of people in the two host countries wanted an India v Pakistan final in Calcutta. Neither host made it. On 4 November in Lahore, Australia made 267 for eight, with David Boon scoring 65, and helped along by 34 extras. Javed Miandad and Imran Khan added 112 for the fourth wicket and kept Pakistan in the chase, but McDermott took five for 44, and Pakistan were all out for 249. Imran, who had said he would retire after the tournament, was persuaded to return a few months later, and would lead Pakistan to the title in 1992.

The next day in Bombay, Graham Gooch swept India's spinners, again and again, for 115. It was a planned innings: Gooch had practised the sweep for hours in the nets, and Maninder Singh and Ravi Shastri could not find a length to stop it. England made 254 for six, Mohammad Azharuddin made 64 in reply, and India lost their last five wickets for 15 runs to go out by 35. Gooch finished as the tournament's top scorer with 471.

A final for neutrals

The final on 8 November was played before a vast Eden Gardens crowd with neither host involved, and the crowd adopted Australia. Allan Border won the toss and batted. Boon made 75 from 125 balls, and at the end of the innings Mike Veletta hit 45 not out from 31 balls, lifting Australia to 253 for five with 65 runs from the last six overs.

England began the chase steadily. Bill Athey made 58, and by the middle of the innings he and the captain Mike Gatting had put on 69 for the third wicket. At 135 for two, with Gatting batting fluently, England were ahead of the rate and the favourites.

The reverse sweep

Border brought himself on. With his first ball, a slow left-arm delivery outside leg stump, Gatting tried a reverse sweep, gloved it onto his shoulder, and was caught by the wicketkeeper Greg Dyer. No single shot in World Cup history has been discussed more. England had been in control; after it, they were not. Allan Lamb made 45, but the rate climbed, and England needed 17 from the last over. They finished on 246 for eight, seven runs short. Boon was player of the match, and McDermott, with 18 wickets, was the tournament's leading wicket-taker.

Border's team

Few people had expected Australia to win. Three years earlier Border had inherited a side weakened by retirements and by a rebel tour to South Africa, and it had lost far more than it won. The 1987 side was young, fit and well organised, with Boon, Marsh, Jones and Waugh at its heart, and it won because it fielded brilliantly and kept its nerve in close matches, the one-run win in Madras and the seven-run final among them.

It was the start of something. Australia would go on to win more World Cups than any other side, and several of the players who took their first steps here, Waugh above all, were still there when the run of titles began in earnest twelve years later. The tournament also proved that the World Cup could leave England and grow. The next one, the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, would change how the game looked altogether.