This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
The inaugural Cricket World Cup, hosted by England in 1975, gathered eight teams, the six Test-playing nations of the time along with two invited associate sides, East Africa and Sri Lanka, neither of which held full Test status yet. Every match was played to sixty overs per side, in the all-white clothing and with the traditional red ball that had defined the sport for a century; the colored kits, floodlit day-night matches and white balls now associated with limited-overs cricket did not arrive until the unofficial World Series Cricket competition later in the 1970s and, for the World Cup itself, the 1992 tournament.
The West Indies won that first tournament, defeating Australia in the final at Lord's under captain Clive Lloyd, whose innings of 102 runs in the final remains one of the most celebrated individual performances in the competition's history. The West Indies retained the title at the following tournament in 1979, becoming the format's first back-to-back champions and opening a period of West Indian dominance in world cricket that carried through most of the 1980s, built on a fast bowling attack widely regarded as the most feared in the sport's history.