Dates | 22 February–25 March |
---|---|
Administrator(s) | International Cricket Council |
Cricket format | One Day International |
Tournament format(s) | Round-robin and Knockout |
Host(s) |
Australia New Zealand |
Champions | Pakistan (1st title) |
Runners-up | England |
Participants | 9 |
Matches played | 39 |
Player of the series | Martin Crowe |
Most runs | Martin Crowe (456) |
Most wickets | Wasim Akram (18) |
The 1992 Cricket World Cup (officially the Benson & Hedges World Cup 1992) was the fifth staging of the Cricket World Cup, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was held in Australia and New Zealand from 22 February to 25 March 1992, and finished with Pakistan beating England in the final to become the World Cup champions for the first time.
The 1992 World Cup was the first to feature coloured player clothing, white cricket balls and black sightscreens with a number of matches being played under floodlights. The 1992 World Cup was also the first to be held in the Southern Hemisphere. It was also the first World Cup to include South Africa, who had been allowed to re-join the International Cricket Council as a Test-playing nation after the end of apartheid.
The format was changed from previous tournaments, with a complete round-robin replacing the former two qualifying groups. The initial draw was released with eight competing countries and 28 round-robin matches, plus two semi-finals and a final. In late 1991, South Africa were re-admitted to the International Cricket Council after 21 years of exclusion due to apartheid, and the draw was amended to include them, adding another eight matches to the round-robin.
The rule for calculating the target score for the team batting second in rain-affected matches was also changed. The previous rule (the Average Run Rate method) simply multiplied the run rate of the team batting first by the number of overs available to the team batting second, but this rule had been deemed to give an unfair advantage to the team batting second.
In an attempt to rectify this, the target score would now be calculated by the Most Productive Overs method. In this system, if the team batting second had 44 overs available, their target score would be one greater than the 44 highest scoring overs of the team batting first.