ICC World Cup 2019
Part 15 - The Predators
Read previous post of this blog series. Please check the below links
Remember how Australia was there from 1996 to 2007. Many teams will fear to face them at that time. Fans will decide it be will be a loss if their favorite teams going to play against Australia. Not only in One day they were unbeatable in test matches too. If a team draw a test match against them that will consider as more than a victory. Their 11th player also will score boundaries. More than that West Indies form was there before 1983. Many of us know England and Australia were the strong team when world cup was started. But only few know West Indies were the strongest team in the world at that time. Their batting and bowling skills were out of box for other teams. Because of that only they won world cup two times, that also consecutive. No other team retain the trophy until it was done by Australia in 2003. They have lot of legendary cricketer in their team like Clive Lloyd, Viv Richards, Courtney Walsh, Ambrose, Gabriel, Gayle, Brain Lara, Chanderpaul, M Marshall, M Holding, I Bishop and the list goes. Such a kind of team were now enter world cup by playing world cup qualifiers match. What happen to them? Which one made them like this? Is West Indies didnt have quality players after that? Will discuss everything in this series.
World Cup Journey:
1975 - Champions
1979 - Champions
1983 - Runner Up
1987 - Group stage
1992 - Group stage
1996 - Semi fnals
1999 - Group stage
2003 - Group stage
2007 - Super Eight
2011 - Quarter Finals
2015 - Quarter Finals
There is no surprise in the first two world cup for West Indies. Obviously they were the strongest and they won both the tournaments. The only difference is they played finals against different opponent Australia in 1975 and England in 1979. Clive Lloyd became the first captain in world cup to win two titles. With the same potential they started 1983 world cup at England. But in first match itself they faced a defeat against India. Then as usual West Indies won all the games and reached finals. Again they faced India at finals. This time they were ready to repay the loss faced in group stage. They were in cloud nine after restricting India for 183 runs at finals. But they failed in batting and went all out for 140 runs. Defending Champions lost the match by 43 runs to a minnows like India at that time. After that they cant able to reach finals till now.
After 1983 their best is Semi finals in 1996 and Quarter Finals in 2011 & 2015. But this time it is round robin method. So West Indies have to work hard to finish top 4 in this tournament. 1992 also there is a round robin method in world cup and West Indies didnt cross the group stage. In 2015 world cup they came to quarter finals with strong line up. But Guptil's double century innings eliminated them from the tournament. Even though they have eliminated the team scored 250 runs all out from just 30 overs.
Windies squad for Worldcup 2019:
No more West Indies now, they became Windies. Hereafter we are going to use the word Windies to specify the Carribean players.
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