This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Cricket's governing body, now the International Cricket Council, began in 1909 as the Imperial Cricket Conference, an organization limited to three founding members, England, Australia and South Africa, all governed at the time under the British Empire that had carried the sport to each of them. That colonial origin left a lasting hierarchy in the sport's governance: a smaller group of Test-playing full member nations has long held disproportionate power over scheduling, revenue and rule-making compared with the larger number of associate and affiliate nations that make up most of the sport's global membership today.
The World Cup itself was only possible once a shorter form of the game existed to host it. One Day International cricket, played to a fixed number of overs per side rather than across multiple days, emerged only in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a faster alternative to traditional Test cricket, making a single-tournament world championship practical for the first time. The tournament's early decades were dominated by the West Indies, whose fast bowling attack and back-to-back titles in 1975 and 1979 established a period of West Indian dominance in the sport; Australia has since become the tournament's most successful team overall, with five titles, while India's growing television audience and commercial market have shifted much of the sport's financial center toward South Asia since the 1990s. The 2019 final between England and New Zealand ended tied after both the match and a Super Over tiebreaker finished level, and England was awarded the trophy on a boundary-count rule that organizers abandoned for future finals after the outcome drew sustained criticism as an unsatisfying way to decide a world championship.