Glorious half-century
When it’s good it’s very good indeed
This article is taken from the March 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.
The Cricket World Cup is 50 not out this year. It’s now a global behemoth which generates more than $2bn in direct and ancillary revenue. Back in 1975, however, the concept was so tentative that it was simply called the Prudential Cup and was effectively Test cricket in miniature. White clothes, red balls, run rates a strange affectation: Sunil Gavaskar batted all 60 overs for only 36 runs in India’s group match against England.
Four years later, West Indian captain Clive Lloyd was widely suspected of deliberately dropping the slow-scoring Geoffrey Boycott during the final in order to keep him in. “It’s not true,” Lloyd said later, “but it wouldn’t have been a bad tactic.”
At the other end of the scale, his teammate Collis King found a miniature bottle of brandy in one of his gloves as he went out to bat, knocked it back en route through the Long Room, and went on to score 86 off 66 balls. The West Indies won both those tournaments and would have made it a hat-trick in 1983 had they not lost to an inspired and unfancied Indian side in the final.
It wasn’t until the fifth iteration in 1992, won by Pakistan after a disastrous start and their captain Imran Khan’s exhortation to “fight like cornered tigers”, that the World Cup became what it is today: coloured clothing, white balls, just 50 overs, and some radical tactics specific to the one-day game.
New Zealand opener Mark Greatbatch would get his team off to a flying start rather than patiently build a platform, an approach taken to the next level by Sri Lanka in 1996, when Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana leapt from the blocks as though scalded: never more so than in the quarter-final against England when Jayasuriya clubbed 82 off 44 balls.
But that Sri Lankan side was more than just two men: it was a true collective. Their national board had only a few thousand dollars, their country was beset by civil war and terrorism, and their star bowler Muttiah Muralitharan had been humiliatingly no-balled for throwing in a recent Test series against Australia.
For Sri Lanka, these were not setbacks: they were fuel. Led magnificently by skipper Arjuna Ranatunga, who could have taught Sir Alex Ferguson a thing or two about siege mentality and attention to detail, they went the entire tournament undefeated and lit up every match they played. “These Sri Lankans are giving the Aussies a real hiding,” exclaimed Tony Greig. “Not only do they win, they win in great style. They play the sort of cricket people want to watch.”
Australia triumphed three years later, but not before a titanic semi-final against South Africa. A match of staggering intensity swung this way and that before arriving at the final over with a simple equation: South Africa needed nine to win, Australia one wicket. Lance Klusener scorched Damien Fleming’s first two deliveries to the boundary with the speed and purpose of tracer bullets: it is genuinely possible that no one has ever hit the ball harder. Third ball, dot.
It was the greatest world cup match yet seen, and would remain so for 20 years
On the fourth ball, undone by suffocating pressure and deafening crowd noise, Klusener and Allan Donald contrived a fearful mix-up, Klusener running when he shouldn’t have and Donald not running when he should. Australia had the simplest of run-outs, and the ending was captured in one of the great sporting photos: all 11 Australian players cavorting in delirium whilst Donald turns away in despair with his bat forlorn and useless on the ground.
It was the greatest world cup match yet seen, and would remain so for 20 years until England and New Zealand went one better at Lord’s in the 2019 final. A few miles away at Wimbledon, Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer were playing out the longest men’s singles final in history as Ben Stokes almost single-handedly chased down New Zealand’s tota. For a good half hour or so, millions of TV viewers shuttled between channels, desperate not to miss out on either scarcely credible climax. Djokovic triumphed 13-12 in the fifth set just as Stokes levelled the scores and took the match to a Super Over.
England scored 15 off their Super Over: New Zealand 14 off their first five balls. Final delivery, two to win. Martin Guptill clips it off his legs towards Jason Roy, the boundary rider down at deep midwicket. Easy to think about hiding away there, to hope the ball goes somewhere else. No. You have to want it. You have to back yourself.
Roy racing in from the boundary, gathering the ball cleanly in sweat-soaked palms, rising, aiming, throwing. A streak of black in the corner of his vision: Guptill, haring back for the second run which will win the match, the tournament, everything. The throw bouncing, a quickening skid off the grass into Jos Buttler’s gloves, and the bails are off and Guptill’s still a stride short, and in the commentary box Ian Smith finds the perfect words. “England have won by the barest of margins! By the barest of all margins! Absolute ecstasy for England: agony, agony for New Zealand!”
This is why the World Cup’s reached its half century, and why hopefully it will eventually convert that to a ton: because like the girl with the curl, when it’s good it’s very good indeed.
