1975 Cricket World Cup

Result

Player of the Match (Final)

Clive Lloyd, West Indies

Tournament format

The first-ever Cricket World Cup. 8 teams (the six Test-playing nations of the day plus Sri Lanka and East Africa) in two groups of four, single round-robin, top two per group to the semi-finals, then the final. 60 overs per side, played in traditional white clothing with a red ball, daytime only.

Full match archive

Every match of the 1975 tournament, not just the final — all 14 group-stage and semi-final matches, plus the final round-robin standings. See all 14 matches →

Final: match context

The inaugural Cricket World Cup, then officially the Prudential Cup, was won by the West Indies, who beat Australia by 17 runs in a match that ran nearly ten hours at a sold-out Lord's. South Africa were excluded entirely under the sporting boycott of apartheid, and the tournament was played in the 60-overs-a-side, white-clothing, red-ball format that had defined one-day international cricket since its 1971 invention -- a far cry from the coloured kits and floodlights that would arrive within two decades. Australia won the toss and chose to field first. West Indies were given the platform they needed by captain Clive Lloyd, who smashed 102 off just 85 balls -- including surviving a dropped chance on 26 -- and put on a decisive 149-run stand for the fourth wicket with the more watchful Rohan Kanhai, who made 55 in what proved to be the final innings of his international career. Late contributions from Keith Boyce (34) and Bernard Julien, unbeaten on 26, pushed West Indies to a commanding 291 for 8 from their 60 overs. Australia's reply got underway through Ian Chappell (62) and Alan Turner (40), and for a spell the chase looked live. But the match turned on a piece of fielding rather than bowling: Viv Richards, who managed only 5 runs with the bat that day, ran out three separate Australian batsmen with a series of direct hits, repeatedly cutting off partnerships before they could develop. Left-arm swing bowler Gary Gilmour, who had destroyed England in the semi-final days earlier, took 5 for 48, but it was Richards's fielding that broke Australia's spirit as much as anything with the ball. Australia were eventually bowled out for 274 in 58.4 overs, 17 runs short, and the match ended amid a chaotic pitch invasion and a contested decision over the game's final runs as spectators streamed onto the outfield. Beyond the result, the tournament's enduring image is a very different one: India opener Sunil Gavaskar's bizarre 36 not out off 174 balls in a group match against England, an innings so slow and seemingly indifferent to India's target that it is still cited today as one of cricket's strangest individual performances, and one of the format's first real lessons in how one-day cricket differed from Tests. Elsewhere, Sri Lanka were bowled out for just 86 by West Indies -- the first sub-100 total in One Day International history -- while New Zealand's Glenn Turner top-scored the whole tournament with 333 runs and Gilmour finished with 11 wickets from only two matches. West Indies' triumph confirmed them as the format's first dominant power, a status they would extend at the very next World Cup four years later.

Sources

• Wikipedia: 1975 Cricket World Cup
• Wikipedia: 1975 Cricket World Cup final
• ESPNcricinfo