CWC 2019 Quiz: How well do you know the history of the World Cup Finals?

The 2019 World Cup will witness a new title winner when England and New Zealand lock horns at the Lord’s Cricket Ground. This will be the first time since the 1996 World Cup that a new World Cup champion will arise as the last one was Sri Lanka. In fact, this will be the first CWC final since the 1992 edition where both the finalists never won a World Cup. England were a part of that final as well where they went down against Pakistan.

They will be hoping to turn their fortunes around as they look for their maiden ICC ODI tournament title. England did win a World T20 but lost twice in the final of Champions Trophy and three times in World Cup finals. New Zealand, who never won a semi-final in the World Cup until 2011, won twice in two editions and made it to the final. They were annihilated during the 2015 final by the Aussies and seek a change having the confidence of beating India in the semis.

In the quiz below about the World Cup finals, you can find various lesser-known aspects that were recorded in the finals of 11 editions thus far. World Cups have almost ben ‘X’ number of teams fighting it out to play Australia. However, Australia’s unbeaten run in the semi-finals came to an end against England in Birmingham. The same venue hosted their tied semis against South Africa in 1999 but the Aussies sneaked past due to the head-to-head ascendence.

There have been some major records in the CWC finals and one of them being the 1979 final between Windies and England. A record number of batsmen bagged ducks; the most number of duck dismissals in an ODI game. In the history of ODI cricket, only two players have recorded the treble of 100+ runs, 2+ wickets and 1+ catches. Joe Root became the second player to achieve this during the game against Windies in this tournament.

Sometimes, centuries might not be enough and that was realized by Mahela Jayawardene during the 2011 final. The experienced batsman struck a brilliant century against India to push the Sri Lankan score to a defendable extent. But India chased down the target comfortably in the end despite no one scoring hundreds in response. However, more than a ton, 90s from Gautam Gambhir and MS Dhoni remain a greater memory in the billion hearts as it ended the 28-year-old wait for a World Cup title victory.