History of the ICC Cricket World Cup a composite team from East Africa. One notable omission was the South African cricket team who were not competing due to the international sports boycott. West Indies won the first Cricket World Cup by defeating Australia by 17 runs in the final. The next two World Cups held in 1979 and 1983 were again hosted by England. The 1979 Cricket World Cup saw the introduction of the ICC Trophy, a competition used to select non-Test playing teams for the World Cup. Sri Lanka and Canada qualified through the ICC Trophy in 1979. West Indies again won the World Cup tournament,
History of the ICC Cricket World Cup World Cups, each team played a round-robin, while in the following two tournaments, each team played the rest in their group twice. The top two teams in each group played the semi-finals and the winners of the semi-finals played against each other in the final. In the 1992 Cricket World Cup, all teams played each other once. The top four qualified for the knockout stage which was contested in similar fashion to the previous events. In the 1996 Cricket World Cup, the number of teams increased from nine to twelve and were divided into two groups. The top four teams