Cricket World Cups and Trophies: Winners and Facts

The correct answer is C, West Indies. The first World Cup was played in England in 1975 over 60 overs an innings, and West Indies beat Australia in the final at Lord's under Clive Lloyd. They retained the trophy in 1979, so Lloyd is the only captain to win it in two successive editions.

Option A, Australia, lost that 1975 final and had to wait until 1987 for its first title, which it then followed with five more. Option B, England, hosted the 1975, 1979 and 1983 tournaments and lost the finals of 1979, 1987 and 1992 before finally winning in 2019. Option D, India, was a minor side in 1975 and won its first title in 1983 at the same ground, beating West Indies. The safest way to hold this question is to remember that the first two World Cups were both in England and both won by West Indies.

The correct answer is B, Lord's. India beat West Indies in the final on 25 June 1983 at Lord's in London, defending a total of 183 and winning by 43 runs; Mohinder Amarnath was named player of the match and Kapil Dev was the captain who received the trophy on the famous balcony.

Option A, The Oval, hosted a semi-final of that tournament, which makes it a plausible distractor. Option C, Old Trafford, is where India beat England in the other semi-final, and it is also the ground most often confused with Lord's in this question. Option D, Edgbaston, staged group matches in 1983 and the 2013 Champions Trophy final, but not the 1983 final. Note the pattern in the paper: the 1983 and 2019 finals were both at Lord's, and the 2011 final was at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

The correct answer is C, M. S. Dhoni. India beat Sri Lanka in the final at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on 2 April 2011, and Dhoni, who finished the chase himself, was named player of the match; Yuvraj Singh was player of the tournament. The win made India the first country to lift the World Cup in a final played at home.

Option A, Rahul Dravid, captained India in the 2007 edition, in which the team went out in the group stage. Option B, Virat Kohli, played in the 2011 side as a young batsman but captained India only later, and never in a World Cup final. Option D, Sourav Ganguly, led India to the 2003 final in Johannesburg, where Australia won. Dhoni is also the captain who won the first T20 World Cup in 2007, which is why his name appears in two separate questions from this chapter.

The correct answer is B, India and Pakistan. The 1987 tournament, sponsored as the Reliance Cup, was the first taken away from England and the first in which an innings was cut from 60 overs to 50, the length used ever since. Australia won the final against England in Kolkata under Allan Border.

Option A, Australia and New Zealand, hosted the next edition in 1992, the one that introduced coloured clothing, the white ball and floodlit matches, and also the 2015 tournament. Option C, South Africa, hosted in 2003 and the first T20 World Cup in 2007, but could not host earlier because it was excluded from international cricket until 1991. Option D, West Indies, hosted its only World Cup in 2007. Remember the sequence of firsts: 1975 the first tournament, 1987 the first outside England, 1992 the first under lights.

The correct answer is B, more boundaries hit in the final. England and New Zealand finished level after fifty overs each at Lord's, and the Super Over that followed was tied as well. The playing conditions then in force gave the title to the side with more fours and sixes in the match, and that was England, who won their first World Cup this way.

Option A, net run rate, decides places in a group table, never the result of a knockout match. Option C is wrong because wickets are not counted in a Super Over tie-break in this fashion, and the rule as written spoke of boundaries. Option D, a bowl-out, was used in Twenty20 cricket before the Super Over was introduced, most famously in the 2007 T20 World Cup match between India and Pakistan, but it had long been dropped by 2019. The boundary-count rule was removed after this final, so 2019 remains the only World Cup settled in this manner.

The correct answer is C, Australia. Australia has won the one-day World Cup six times, in 1987, 1999, 2003, 2007, 2015 and 2023, and its run of three in a row between 1999 and 2007 is unmatched. No other country is close to that record.

Option A, India, has won twice, in 1983 and 2011, and has also lost two finals, in 2003 and 2023. Option B, West Indies, won the first two editions in 1975 and 1979 and so also stands at two. Option D, England, won only in 2019, at its fourth attempt in a final, having lost those of 1979, 1987 and 1992. Keep the full roll in mind, because only six countries have ever won this trophy: Australia, India, West Indies, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and England.

The correct answer is B, India. The first men's T20 World Cup was staged in South Africa in 2007, and India beat Pakistan in the final at Johannesburg under M. S. Dhoni, a match remembered for its last over. India won the tournament a second time in 2024, when the final was played in Barbados.

Option A, Pakistan, lost that first final but won the next edition in England in 2009. Option C, South Africa, hosted the 2007 tournament but did not reach its final, which is what makes it the most tempting wrong answer. Option D, Australia, won its only men's T20 title in 2021 in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Note for the paper that England and West Indies have each won this tournament twice as well, England in 2010 and 2022 and West Indies in 2012 and 2016.

The correct answer is C, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, who played for England and was among the outstanding batsmen of his time. The tournament began in the 1934-35 season and Bombay won that first edition; Mumbai has remained by far its most successful team.

Option A, K. S. Duleepsinhji, was Ranjitsinhji's nephew and gives his name to the Duleep Trophy, which is the pair of names this question is built to confuse. Option B, C. K. Nayudu, India's first Test captain, is remembered in the C. K. Nayudu Trophy, the under-23 competition. Option D, Vijay Hazare, gives his name to the domestic one-day tournament. Fix the set in memory by format: Ranji for first-class, Vijay Hazare for one-day, Syed Mushtaq Ali for Twenty20, Cooch Behar for under-19.

The correct answer is B, the Ranji Trophy champion and Rest of India. The Irani Cup is a single first-class match, usually played at the start of the season, in which the reigning Ranji champion meets a Rest of India side drawn from the rest of the country. It began in the 1959-60 season and honours a long-serving administrator of the game.

Option A describes the old zonal format of the Duleep Trophy, in which North, South, East, West and Central Zone met each other. Option C describes the Cooch Behar Trophy, the under-19 competition, while the under-23 tournament is the C. K. Nayudu Trophy. Option D describes the selection sides used in unofficial and tour matches, not a named trophy. Because the Irani Cup depends on the Ranji result, the two names are best learnt together as one fact.

The correct answer is A, Zimbabwe. India had slipped to 17 for 5 when Kapil Dev came in and made 175 not out at Tunbridge Wells, taking the side to 266 and a win that kept the campaign alive. The innings is quoted in general knowledge papers as the highest by an Indian in that tournament.

Option B, Australia, was beaten by India later in the same group stage, but the big individual innings of that match was not this one. Option C, West Indies, was the team India beat in the final, and also the team India defeated in the very first match of the tournament, so it is an easy wrong pick. Option D, England, was India's semi-final opponent at Old Trafford. Pair this fact with the other 1983 details that are asked: the final at Lord's, Kapil Dev as captain, and Mohinder Amarnath as player of the match.

The correct answer is B, Chetan Sharma, who dismissed three New Zealand batsmen in successive balls at Nagpur in the 1987 World Cup. No bowler had managed a hat-trick in the four earlier editions, so the record stands as the first of its kind in the tournament.

Option A, Kapil Dev, was India's captain and leading all-rounder in that era and is the name candidates reach for by habit, but the hat-trick was not his. Option C, Wasim Akram, took two hat-tricks in Test cricket and one in one-day internationals, though not the first in a World Cup; he was, however, the player of the match in the 1992 final. Option D, Glenn McGrath, holds the record for the most wickets in World Cup history, which is the fact most often paired with this question in the same paper.

The correct answer is C, the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. It is the inter-state Twenty20 tournament run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India and is named after the batsman who scored the first century by an Indian in a Test abroad. Its results decide much of the selection for Twenty20 sides.

Option A, the Vijay Hazare Trophy, is the inter-state one-day tournament, fifty overs an innings, and is the answer to the same question when it asks about the limited-overs rather than the Twenty20 format. Option B, the Deodhar Trophy, is also a one-day competition, played between selected teams and named after D. B. Deodhar. Option D, the Duleep Trophy, is a first-class tournament. Sort the four by format once and the question becomes routine: first-class Ranji and Duleep, one-day Vijay Hazare and Deodhar, Twenty20 Syed Mushtaq Ali.