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1992 Cricket WC

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    1992 Cricket WC

    An ad caught my eye on FB the other day for retro stylised mugs, mousemats, phone cases etc, and in amongst the West German strip in the 1990s WC, 1988 Holland etc was a series of designs based on strips for teams in the 1992 Cricket World Cup. This isn't the first time, and it made me wonder why this tournament has such a hold over the visual imagination in the UK. Is this shared in cricket generally, or just amongst a generation of fans in the UK of a certain age? And why was it? It wasn't the first time we'd seen coloured strips (the world series of cricket had had them for ages) and the CWC that year being in Australia meant most people's awareness of it wasn't live, or visual (I remember listening to TMS on my walkman on the way to college). So what gives?

    #2
    If you look at the squads, it was full of recognisable test greats, before the concept of a separate one-day squad had really taken hold, and the limited overs specialists, such as Fairbrother for England, were quite rare. England had Botham, Gooch and Lamb; West Indies: Haynes, Marshall and Richardson; India: Kapil Dev, Shastri and Azharuddin, Pakistan: Imran, Miandad and Malik; Australia: Border, Boon and the Waughs. Plus South Africa, with the exciting Allan Donald were playing for the first time in my generation's memory.

    Also the coloured clothing and white ball were new in this tournament format, as were floodlit matches.

    My abiding memory was of the injustice of England skittling Pakistan for 70-odd in the first stage, but then getting rained off, the no result ensuring Pakistan scraped through to the semis, ultimately beating England in the final.

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      #3
      From what I understand, the look of that tournament has a similar hold on Australians who are old enough to have seen it.


      l
      Not to mention what it means to Pakistanis.
      Last edited by ursus arctos; 29-03-2021, 01:24.

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        #4
        In NZ too, because the run to the semis was so unexpected, with a very limited squad, Sir Paddles having retired.

        But it was easy to get immersed in a tournament happening in local time zones. I don't know about the UK though. It was on Sky, which I had forgotten, perhaps because I automatically associate them "starting" with the Premier League later in 1992 (I know that Sky existed of course, but how big were the audiences?).

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          #5
          India’s current ODI shirt and England’s 2019 World Cup shirt are also heavily inspired by 1992.

          Originally posted by tee rex View Post
          In NZ too, because the run to the semis was so unexpected, with a very limited squad, Sir Paddles having retired.

          But it was easy to get immersed in a tournament happening in local time zones. I don't know about the UK though. It was on Sky, which I had forgotten, perhaps because I automatically associate them "starting" with the Premier League later in 1992 (I know that Sky existed of course, but how big were the audiences?).
          They’d have made the final too had John Wright not captained them out of the game in place of Martin Crowe.

          The tournament being exclusively on Sky (supposedly the BBC only showed highlights of the final) is mildly troubling, that such a tournament is so iconic in English minds despite being squirrelled away on a TV channel that had far fewer viewers than now shows how cricket in England has declined in popularity.

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            #6
            All cricket in the 90s is a closed book to me, this included. Why couldn't they have had trousers of a different colour from the shirt so they looked a little less like pyjamas?

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              #7
              I think the answer is that Packer believed that single colour kits looked better on Channel Nine

              The ICC just aped what he had done

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                #8
                I agree with Packer. I was thinking only yesterday how much better this looks :



                Compared to this :




                The navy trousers make them look like city boys out in a bar after work.


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                  #9
                  Actually in that picture from 92, it seems like South Africa may have got off the pyjama train. How did they manage that?

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                    #10
                    To darken the look of the whole kit and give better contrast to Pakistan?

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                      #11
                      Trouser malfunction on the photo shoot

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                        #12
                        Much like the name not being on the Zimbabwe shirt yet.

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                          #13
                          It has occurred to me that the first attempt had it spelled wrong

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                            #14
                            Originally posted by NHH View Post
                            It wasn't the first time we'd seen coloured strips (the world series of cricket had had them for ages)
                            They were however widely available to buy in the same way as football tops, which was a novelty at the time. I might be over-remembering but they seemed popular at the time.

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                              #15
                              It was the first tournament where pinch hitting was a thing. Prior to then one day batting strategy hadn't much evolved from "bat as normal then slog at the end", now teams opened with players whose objective was to use the pace of the new ball to hit out. Mark Greatbatch did it most effectively for New Zealand, Botham opened for England, Kapil Dev did so for India. It was pretty primitive stuff compared to the modern era and it doesn't obviously show up in the basic scorecards (look how many teams defended sub-220 totals) but at the time it was a real development.

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                                #16
                                Originally posted by longeared View Post
                                It was pretty primitive stuff compared to the modern era and it doesn't obviously show up in the basic scorecards (look how many teams defended sub-220 totals) but at the time it was a real development.
                                You're not wrong. Only ten scores above 250 in the whole tournament, of which, only two surpassed 300 and that was in the same game.

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                                  #17
                                  Sri Lanka, four years later, were the first ones who worked out that coming out and scoring 50 off the first 5 overs (not the first 15) was the way to do it, and everyone dropped their Pimms and Lemonade in utter shock.
                                  Last edited by Rogin the Armchair fan; 29-03-2021, 19:29.

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                                    #18
                                    1992 ODI cricket seems to belong to the 80s more than the 90s for the reasons noted above. Sri Lanka reinvented the game in 1996, then you had players like Bevan, Symonds, Gilchrist, Tendulkar and Sehwag scoring at rates that had been unimaginable among specialist batsmen except for Viv Richards (even Botham's strike rate was only 79, although Kapil Dev was before his time at 95, the same as Stokes today).

                                    Pakistan might be the luckiest ever winners and England could reasonably claim to have been the best side in the tournament (as they possibly were in 1987). The event was, however, tarnished by the farce in the semi-final (here from 19:45):

                                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBOaMJmcVi0
                                    Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 29-03-2021, 20:43.

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                                      #19
                                      Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                      Pakistan might be the luckiest ever winners ...
                                      I'm not biting. No, just calmly letting it go. Have moved on. Completely.

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                                        #20
                                        I realize now that my statement "England could reasonably claim to have been the best side in the tournament" could also be said of NZ, who topped the round robin group and beat England comfortably. Pakistan were woeful in that group stage.
                                        Last edited by Satchmo Distel; 29-03-2021, 21:30.

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                                          #21
                                          This is either some next-level straight batting from Satch, or he's genuinely forgotten what happened two years ago.

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                                            #22
                                            Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                            Pakistan might be the luckiest ever winners and England could reasonably claim to have been the best side in the tournament (as they possibly were in 1987). The event was, however, tarnished by the farce in the semi-final (here from 19:45):

                                            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBOaMJmcVi0
                                            24 off 14. 2 runs, 22 off 13. No, 22 off 7. No, actually make it 22 off 1, LOL.

                                            I think it's fair to say both of the finalists were fortunate to make it.

                                            This farce of course led to the Duckworth-Lewis method being introduced. For all its faults and apparent arbitrariness, it does avoid the likes of this that the "productive over" system or whatever they called it produced.

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                                              #23
                                              I think England would still have won on D/L though, given that SA were so many wickets down. The weakness of D/L is that it doesn't allow for the ability of an all-rounder batting at 7 or lower to swing a game, or the kind of innings Stokes played the other day. Then again, it can only operate on probability which by definition discriminates against teams who can occasionally do exceptional things. Another even bigger issue is that teams have to pace their innings around D/L if they know bad weather is likely, so you get an even more artificial structure to a game.

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                                                #24
                                                Under Duckwerth-Lewis, SA's original target would have been higher. SA were robbed by TV schedules that required the game to conclude at a certain time. But had SA batted the 45 overs out and won (not unlikely, with McMillan and Richardson on a good strike-rate, and big-hitting Pringle still to come), then England would have had legit gripes about being disadvantaged, having been deprived of their last five overs during which they might have accelerated their strike-rate.

                                                I reckon SA's tactical inexperience and Wessels' infllexibility also cost them. Donald was expensive and should have been pulled earlier; Cronje should have been ahead of Kuiper in the batting line-up, since Hansie was better at building an innings, Kuiper coming in at 5 instead of 4 on a solid foundation might have given him even greater scope to accelerate the run chase.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                                  Actually in that picture from 92, it seems like South Africa may have got off the pyjama train. How did they manage that?
                                                  Originally posted by Kevin S View Post
                                                  To darken the look of the whole kit and give better contrast to Pakistan?
                                                  They could do with attempting that today, bizarre how they've managed almost identical kits from two different manufacturers:

                                                  https://twitter.com/icc/status/1377889717618761728?s=21

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