History of the Cricket World Cup

=Prior to the 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. [ ] Australia defeated Sri Lanka in the final by 53 runs (D/L), in farcical light conditions, extending their undefeated run in the World Cup to 29 matches and winning three straight World Cups. [cite web| url=http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/ci/content/story/292773.html|publisher=Cricinfo|title=Australia v Sri Lanka, World Cup final, Barbados|date=2007-04-28|accessdate=2007-05-06]

Historical formats of final tournament

The number of teams in and the format of the final tournament has varied considerably over the years. In summary:

Explanation

Early formats

The format of the Cricket World Cup has changed greatly over the course of its history. The first four tournaments had eight teams each, divided into two groups of four teams each. 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 played the semi-finals and the winners of the semi-finals played against each other in the final.

Trial Formats

In the 1992 Cricket World Cup, all teams 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 Cricket World Cup, the number of teams increased from nine to twelve and were divided into two groups. The top four teams of each group qualified for the knockout stage this time, which also included quarter-finals.

uper stage Era

The 1999 Cricket World Cup tournament had a similar group stage format, but there were dramatic changes in the second stage with a "Super Six" round replacing 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 played 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. The number of participants rose to fourteen, with 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. [ Cite web|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport3/cwc2003/hi/newsid_2890000/newsid_2895200/2895215.stm|work=bbc.co.uk|title= Bacher's World Cup plan ignored|accessdate=2006-09-07 ]

The 2007 Cricket World Cup featured 16 teams allocated into four groups of four. Eleven teams having One Day International status qualified automatically for the tournament while the other five teams were selected from the ICC Trophy. Within each group, the teams played each other in a round-robin format and the top two teams advanced to the "Super 8" round. The eight remaining teams then played in a round-robin format, except that they did not play the other team that advanced from their respective group. [ Cite web|url=http://www.cricketworldcup.com/pdfs/event-overview.pdf|work=cricketworldcup.com|title= About the Event|accessdate=2006-09-02 |format=PDF ] The top four teams from the Super 8 round advanced to the semi-finals and the winners of the semi-finals then contested the final.

References

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