Cricket World Cup

This article is about the men's 50 over tournament. For the women's equivalent tournament, see Women's Cricket World Cup. For the Test tournament, see ICC World Test Championship. For the "mini World Cup", see ICC Champions Trophy. For the T20 tournament, see ICC T20 World Cup.

Cricket World Cup
AdministratorInternational Cricket Council (ICC)
FormatOne Day International
First edition1975  England
Latest edition2023  India
Next edition2027  South Africa
 Zimbabwe
 Namibia
Number of teams14
Current champion Australia (6th title)
Most successful Australia (6 titles)
Most runsIndia Sachin Tendulkar (2,278)[1]
Most wicketsAustralia Glenn McGrath (71)[2]
Websitecricketworldcup.com
Longest continuous champion Australia (3 times) (1999, 2003, 2007)
2027 Cricket World Cup
Tournaments

The Cricket World Cup (officially known as ICC Men's Cricket World Cup)[3] is the quadrennial international championship of One Day International (ODI) cricket. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), every four years, with preliminary qualification rounds leading up to a finals tournament. The tournament is one of the world's most viewed sporting events and considered the "flagship event of the international cricket calendar" by the ICC.[4] It is widely considered the pinnacle championship of the sport of cricket.

The Cricket World Cup Trophy (Pictured in 2023)

The first Cricket World Cup was organised in England in June 1975, with the first ODI cricket match having been played only four years earlier. However, a separate Women's Cricket World Cup had been held two years before the first men's tournament, and a tournament involving multiple international teams had been held as early as 1912, when a triangular tournament of Test matches was played between Australia, England and South Africa. The first three World Cups were held in England. From the 1987 tournament onwards, hosting has been shared between countries under an unofficial rotation system, with fourteen ICC members having hosted at least one match in the tournament.

The current format involves a qualification phase, which takes place over the preceding three years, to determine which teams qualify for the tournament phase. In the tournament phase, 10 teams, including the automatically qualifying host nation, compete for the title at venues within the host nation over about a month. In the 2027 edition, the format will be changed to accommodate an expanded 14-team final competition.[5]

A total of twenty teams have competed in the 13 editions of the tournament, with ten teams competing in the recent 2023 tournament. Australia has won the tournament six times, India and West Indies twice each, while Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England have won it once each. The best performance by a non-full-member team came when Kenya made the semi-finals of the 2003 tournament.

Australia are the current champions after winning the 2023 World Cup in India. The subsequent 2027 World Cup will be held jointly in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

  1. ^ "World Cup Cricket Team Records & Stats". Cricinfo. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
  2. ^ "World Cup Cricket Team Records & Stats". Cricinfo. Retrieved 6 April 2023.
  3. ^ "ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2019 shatters audience records". ICC. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
  4. ^ "Official ICC Men's Cricket World Cup 2023 Website". icc. Retrieved 9 July 2024.
  5. ^ "The road to World Cup 2023: how teams can secure qualification, from rank No. 1 to 32". ESPN Cricinfo. Retrieved 14 August 2019.