The opening match, England against New Zealand on October 5 in Ahmedabad recalls that 2019 final, decided only by a super over after the teams finished with scores level.

"Winning the World Cup is a dream for any player," England captain Eoin Morgan said.

Morgan, set to join the television commentary team for the tournament, has been widely billed as the first England men's captain to lift the trophy in a cricket World Cup.

In fact, it had happened before in 1966, when England took part in the Rothmans Cricket World Cup.

Elite limited overs cricket was then in its infancy, but England defeated the full West Indies team under one day regulations and also beat the Rest of the World in the tournament sponsored by Rothmans, the tobacco giants.

It was repeated with Pakistan taking part in 1967.

England won by six wickets against the Pakistanis but again the encounter was not recognised as an official one day international (ODI).

The first officially recognised contest was in January 1971, when Australia beat England in a hastily arranged event after rain washed out the Test match in Melbourne between the two sides.

In 1972, a three-match series in England was scheduled with sponsorship by Prudential Assurance.

In the same year, the ICC decided that a fully blown international tournament would take place in June 1975.

The organisers actually fought shy of the term 'World Cup' and the posters described the tournament as International Championship Cricket.

Two days before the first International Championship Cricket event was due to begin, cricket in Derbyshire was interrupted by snow.

The sun returned as the teams were received at Buckingham Palace by The Queen and Prince Philip, who was President of the powerful Marylebone Cricket Club.

England, as hosts, were made 11/4 to win the tournament, and were certainly the most experienced nation in the format.

The first round of matches took place simultaneously although not all matches were televised.

At Lord's, England batted first against India. The first ball was faced by John Jameson of Warwickshire who walked out to bat alongside his county colleague Dennis Amiss. 

"It was just like an ordinary match, you didn’t feel you were in a World Cup at all," Jameson recalled.

Later Amiss scored a fluent 137 as England reached 334 for 4 in their sixty overs.

Astonishingly, when India replied, their star opener Sunil Gavaskar batted through the entire innings for only 36.

"Right from the start, we knew the chase was out of the question," Gavaskar explained but later admitted his innings was "a mental block".

India reached 132 for 3 and lost by 202 runs and were soon eliminated from contention.

Thankfully, there was drama to compensate, as West Indies sneaked home by one wicket against Pakistan at Birmingham.

Then in the semi-final, Australian all-rounder Gary Gilmour took six wickets for 14 to dismiss England for 93.

He then top scored with 28 not out to guide Australia home by four wickets.

The final between West Indies and Australia was a played in front of an exuberant full house at Lord’s and only resolved at 8.41pm on the longest day of the year.

West Indies skipper Clive Lloyd struck 102 exhilarating runs as they reached 291 for 8.

There were five run outs in Australia's innings and it was Lloyd who received the elegant trophy from Prince Philip.

Not a single moment had been lost to rain or bad light.

The 1979 tournament was not so fortunate and some matches were interrupted.

Even so, West Indies reached the final again, this time to play England.

Vivian Richards struck 138 and Collis King made 86 as they added 139 for the fifth wicket in a total of 286 for 9.

England subsided to 194 all out and the West Indies celebrated again yet they have never won since and did not even qualify for the tournament which begins this week.

In 1983, the format changed and each team faced their opponents twice.

Zimbabwe sprung an early shock by beating Australia, with Duncan Fletcher later a renowned coach, the star with bat and ball.

 Zimbabwe also had India struggling at 17 for 5 before Kapil Dev struck 175 to inspire a recovery.

Thus encouraged, India swept all the way to the final.

Their unexpected victory against the West Indies is such a landmark moment, a Bollywood film has been made to commemorate it.

There were high hopes that the 1987 World Cup, the first to be staged in India and Pakistan, would culminate in a final showdown between the two host nations.

In fact, both were knocked out in the semi-finals as Australia set up a meeting with England in the final in Kolkata.

Australia’s total was modest by modern day standards but England lost by seven runs.

The dismissal of England skipper Mike Gatting attempting a reverse sweep is remembered to this day.

In 1992, the tournament took place in Australia and New Zealand and for the first time, matches took place under floodlights, a white ball was used and teams wore garish coloured uniforms.

The end of apartheid meant that South Africa were included for their first major tournament in any sport.

"It is not easy to find the words to when you work as hard as we work and at the end of the rainbow we get a crock of gold," South Africa’s United Cricket Board President Geoff Dakin admitted.

"It has been 21 years since we last played official international cricket. It is very emotional for us to be back."

South Africa reached the semi-final, before they fell foul of a ridiculous rule which revealed the extent to which the tournament was in thrall to television.

England scored 252 for 6 in 45 overs after the match had been shortened because of rain.

With 13 balls remaining in their innings, the South Africans still needed 22 runs with four wickets in hand, when rain came.

Ten minutes later, play resumed, but now the scoreboard proclaimed that South Africa needed an impossible 21 off one ball.

Tournament regulations actually provided for a reserve day, but television officials made sure that never happened.

It did at least lead to the introduction of the complex Duckworth-Lewis-Stern (DLS) formula as a fairer means of determining the result in matches affected by weather delay.

Elsewhere in the tournament, Pakistan seemed on the verge of elimination but later ran into a rich vein of form and defeated co-hosts New Zealand in the semi-final.

The final was at the Melbourne Cricket Ground where 87,000 watched as Pakistan's skipper Imran Khan top scored with 72.

England were set a target of 250.

Fast bowler Wasim Akram and spinner Mushtaq Ahmed took three wickets apiece and Pakistan won by 22 runs.

"One of my greatest obsessions in life is to build a cancer hospital, I am sure that this World Cup will go a long way towards the completion of this obsession," Khan revealed afterwards.

Sri Lanka joined Pakistan and India as co-hosts in 1996 but Australia and West Indies refused to play in Sri Lanka because of security concerns after a bomb.

Their matches were forfeited to Sri Lanka, who qualified for the quarter-finals where they defeated England.

West Indies went through to the last four despite also losing to Kenya but Australia beat them by five runs in the semi-final.

Sri Lanka were always on top in the other semi-final against India before play was suspended because of crowd trouble.

Sri Lanka had scored 251 for 8 but Sachin Tendulkar and Sanjay Manjrekar put on 90 for the second wicket.

When both were dismissed in quick succession, India subsided to 120 for 8.

Some spectators set seats on fire in the stand and match referee Clive Lloyd took the teams off for 15 minutes to see if the situation could be calmed.

When matters did not improve, Lloyd reluctantly abandoned proceedings and Sri Lanka were awarded the match by default.

In the final, Australia reached 241 but Sri Lanka swept home with an unbeaten century from Aravinda de Silva for their first title.

Australia had been the dominant test team for much of the decade and in 1999 they won the World Cup, although they nearly came unstuck in an epic semi-final against South Africa.

In the final over, South Africa needed one run off the last four balls.

Allan Donald failed to respond to the call from Lance Klusener and was run out with scores level to leave Australia the winners by virtue of their superior record earlier in the tournament.

By comparison the final was an anti-climax, the first of three successive Australian titles was an eight wicket success over Pakistan.

The 2003 competition was co-hosted by South Africa, Namibia, Kenya and Zimbabwe but played out against a backdrop of political turmoil.

After protracted negotiations, England refused to play Zimbabwe and forfeited the points as a result.

Zimbabwe skipper Andy Flower and fast bowler Henry Olonga wore black armbands to protest against the regime of Robert Mugabe, which they described as the "death of democracy".

In the 2003 final against India, Australia's Ricky Ponting struck an unbeaten 140 as he and Damien Martyn made 88 in an unbroken third wicket stand of 234.

Australia's final total of 359 for 2 was always beyond the Indians who were dismissed 125 runs short of their target.

In 2007, Australia became the first nation to win the World Cup three times in succession when they defeated Sri Lanka.

Adam Gilchrist’s towering 140 included thirteen fours and eight sixes.

He shared an opening partnership of 172 with Matthew Hayden and Sri Lanka lost by 53 runs under the DLS system after delays.

However, everything was overshadowed by the passing of Pakistan’s highly respected coach Bob Woolmer who had been found dead in his hotel room a few hours after Pakistan lost to Ireland.

Tendulkar, the undoubted superstar of Indian cricket, had never been on the winning side in the World Cup.

But the stars were aligned in 2011 when tournament was played in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

India played out a tie with England in a group match when both Tendulkar and England’s Andrew Strauss scored centuries.

Despite a hundred from Ponting, India swept past Australia in the quarter-finals.

Tendulkar hit 85 in the semi-final as India defeated Pakistan to maintain their unbeaten men's World Cup record against their greatest rivals.

Sri Lanka were their opponents in the final, but although Mahela Jayawardene reached a hundred, MS Dhoni’s unbeaten 91 saw India home by six wickets.

Then in 2015, Australia continued the trend of host nation triumph with victory after co-hosts New Zealand had been obliged to decamp to Melbourne for the final after playing all their previous matches on New Zealand soil.

Australia coasted to victory by seven wickets.

New Zealand reached the final in 2019 and won many friends for their sporting demeanour in the aftermath of the super over heartbreak.

Four years on, they at last have the opportunity for redemption.

It is a competition which has grown since those early days when Disney cartoon character Jiminy Cricket was the mascot for a tournament which included only five match days and was all over in a fortnight.

The ICC now has a full on marketing campaign spearheaded by newly named mascots Blaze and Tonk. 

The television coverage provided by ICC TV will feature every match.

"It will be an unparalleled viewing experience for cricket fans," the ICC TV claims.

The 2023 competition is not scheduled to end until November 19.