Facts on the history of Cricket World Cup - 1

In one of my posts during last month (January, 2011), we looked at some of the key highlights of the history of the Rugby World Cup. This was targeting the fact that the next Rugby World Cup is scheduled to be held later this year.

Through this post, I’m taking you through some of the key highlights of the other ‘mega’ sporting event for this year, which is just around the corner.

The ICC Cricket World Cup is always an event that draws the attention of local spectators, and I’m sure you would be interested to know some of those fascinating highlights that I’m going to share now. So let’s start off wishing the Sri Lankan the very best for the World Cup 2011.

• The first three World Cups held in England in 1975, 1979 and 1983 were sponsored by the insurance giant Prudential Insurance.

• In the 1983 Sri Lanka took part as a Test-playing nation, and Zimbabwe qualified through the ICC Trophy. A fielding circle was introduced, 30 yards (27 m) away from the stumps.

• The World Cups of 1987, 1992 and 1996 were named as Reliance World Cup, Benson & Hedges World Cup and Willis World Cup respectively. In the 1987 World Cup held in the subcontinent the games were reduced from 60 to 50 overs per innings.

• The 1992 World Cup, held in Australia and New Zealand, introduced many changes to the game, such as coloured clothing, white balls, day/night matches, and an alteration to the fielding restrictions. The South African cricket team participated in the event for the first time, following the fall of the apartheid regime and the end of the international sports boycott.

• The current trophy was created for the 1999 championships, and was the first permanent prize in the tournament's history; prior to this, different trophies were made for each World Cup.

• The 2003 World Cup in South Africa was the first to sport a mascot, Dazzler the zebra. An orange raccoon-like creature known as Mello was the mascot for the 2007 Cricket World Cup. The mascot for the 2011 Cricket World Cup is Stumpi, the elephant.

• The locations for the 2015 and 2019 Cricket World Cups would be Australia/New Zealand and England respectively.