1992 Cricket World Cup

The game changes colour

The fifth World Cup was the first played in the southern hemisphere, and the first that looks, in the photographs, like the one-day cricket of today. Australia and New Zealand staged it in February and March 1992, and the Australian game had long since absorbed the lessons of World Series Cricket. So the players wore coloured clothing with their names on their backs, the ball was white, the sight-screens were black, and many of the matches were played at night under floodlights. The tournament was sponsored by Benson & Hedges, and it came five years after the last one rather than four, the only break in the pattern.

The format changed too. With nine teams, the organisers dropped groups altogether and had every side play every other once, 36 league matches in all, with the top four going to the semi-finals. It guaranteed that the strongest sides met, and it meant a bad start did not have to be fatal, which turned out to matter a great deal.

South Africa comes back

The ninth team had not been expected when the tournament was planned. South Africa had been out of international cricket for 21 years because of apartheid, and were readmitted to the ICC only in 1991 as the system was dismantled. They were added to the World Cup at short notice, and they arrived with a strong, fit, athletic side led by Kepler Wessels, who had previously played Test cricket for Australia.

Their first World Cup match, against Australia in Sydney, set the tone: South Africa won by nine wickets, and Wessels made 81 not out against the country he used to play for. They went on to beat West Indies, Pakistan, India and Zimbabwe as well, and Jonty Rhodes made the tournament's most famous piece of fielding against Pakistan in Brisbane, flying horizontally through the air to run out Inzamam-ul-Haq. They finished third in the table and reached the semi-finals at their first attempt.

Crowe's New Zealand

The co-hosts New Zealand were not expected to do much, and they won their first seven matches. Their captain, Martin Crowe, had worked out a plan for their slow home pitches. He opened the bowling with the off-spinner Dipak Patel, which almost nobody had done in international cricket, and followed him with a rotation of gentle medium-pacers, Gavin Larsen, Chris Harris and Willie Watson among them, who were almost impossible to hit hard. With the bat, he sent Mark Greatbatch in to attack the new ball while the field was up.

Crowe himself was the best batter of the tournament, making 456 runs at an average of 114 and finishing as its player of the tournament. New Zealand topped the league table with seven wins from eight. Their only defeat came in their last league game, against Pakistan in Christchurch, and they would meet the same side again in the semi-final.

Seventy-four all out

Pakistan had come to Australia without Waqar Younis, their best fast bowler, who was injured, and for three weeks their campaign fell apart. They lost to West Indies by ten wickets, beat only Zimbabwe, and lost to India and South Africa. Against England in Adelaide they were bowled out for 74 in 40.2 overs. England needed 75 to win and had reached 24 for one when rain arrived, and the match was abandoned as a no-result. Pakistan took a point they had done nothing to earn, and it kept them alive.

Imran Khan, 39 years old and playing with a damaged shoulder, told his players to fight like cornered tigers, and he wore a T-shirt with a tiger on it at the toss to make the point. From then on they did not lose in the league. They beat Australia, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, and on the last day of the round-robin West Indies lost to Australia, which lifted Pakistan into fourth place by a single point.

Twenty-one from one ball

Rain-affected matches were decided by a new method that took away the chasing side's lowest-scoring overs rather than reducing the target in proportion. It was meant to be fairer to the side batting first. In the semi-final between England and South Africa in Sydney, it produced the most notorious moment of the tournament. England made 252 for six. South Africa, chasing hard, needed 22 from 13 balls when a short shower stopped play. When the players came back after twelve minutes, the target had been cut by one run and the balls by twelve: 21 from one ball. Brian McMillan could only take a single.

The outrage was worldwide, and it had a lasting effect. Two statisticians, Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis, began work on a better system, and the Duckworth-Lewis method they produced was adopted by the ICC in 1999.

Inzamam at Eden Park

The other semi-final, at Eden Park in Auckland, looked like New Zealand's. Crowe made 91 from 83 balls before tearing a hamstring, and New Zealand reached 262 for seven. Without him on the field they were less sure of their plans, but Pakistan still needed 123 from 15 overs at one stage. Then the 22-year-old Inzamam-ul-Haq, who had been ill the night before and nearly did not play, came in and made 60 from 37 balls. With Javed Miandad, who finished on 57 not out, he put on 88 for the fifth wicket, and Pakistan won with an over to spare.

The night at the MCG

The final on 25 March was played under lights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in front of more than 87,000 people. Imran won the toss and batted, and Pakistan were soon 24 for two. Imran and Miandad rebuilt slowly, adding 139 for the third wicket; Imran was dropped by Graham Gooch on nine, and made 72, while Miandad made 58. At the end, Inzamam hit 42 from 35 balls and Wasim Akram 33 from 19, and Pakistan finished on 249 for six.

England lost Ian Botham for a duck to Wasim and were soon in trouble, but Neil Fairbrother and Allan Lamb added 72 and made the chase look possible. Imran then brought Wasim back. In successive balls, bowling left-arm round the wicket, Wasim bowled Lamb with a ball that swung in and then left him, and bowled Chris Lewis with one that came back sharply. England were all out for 227. Imran took the final wicket himself, Richard Illingworth caught at mid-off, and Pakistan had won by 22 runs. Wasim, with 18 wickets in the tournament, was player of the match.

Pakistan's first World Cup was built on a comeback that started with 74 all out. The same league format would return in 2019, and so would the image of a side that nearly went out early and won in the end. The next tournament took the World Cup back to the subcontinent: 1996, in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.