The subcontinent takes charge
Three co-hosts, twelve teams, thirty group matches and a quarter-final round for the first time. The 1996 World Cup was the first properly commercial edition, sold hard across India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and it began in the worst possible way. After the Tamil Tigers bombed the Central Bank in Colombo in January, Australia and West Indies refused to travel to Sri Lanka. The ICC awarded Sri Lanka both matches on forfeit, which handed them four points and, as it turned out, a great deal of momentum.
Sri Lanka used it. Arjuna Ranatunga's side had worked out something nobody else had: that the fifteen-over fielding restriction was worth attacking rather than surviving. Sanath Jayasuriya and Romesh Kaluwitharana opened by hitting over the top from the first ball. Where fifty in the first fifteen was thought respectable, Sri Lanka took 117 off India, 123 off Kenya, 121 off England in the quarter-final. Against Kenya at Kandy they made 398 for 5, then the highest total in one-day international cricket, and it stayed the record for a decade.
Two nights that went wrong
Kenya beat West Indies by 73 runs at Pune, bowling them out for 93. It was the first time an Associate had beaten West Indies in a one-day international and the tournament's happiest accident.
The unhappiest came at Eden Gardens on 13 March. Sri Lanka made 251 for 8, India lost Tendulkar and then collapsed to 120 for 8 in front of a crowd unofficially put at 110,000. Fruit and bottles came onto the outfield. The players went off for twenty minutes; when they came back, more bottles followed and fires were lit in the stands. Match referee Clive Lloyd awarded the game to Sri Lanka, the first default in the history of Test or one-day international cricket, and Vinod Kambli walked off in tears.
Lahore
Sri Lanka won the toss in the final at the Gaddafi Stadium and bowled, which no side had risked in five previous finals, every one of which had been won by the team batting first. Mark Taylor made 74 and Australia reached 241 for 7 without ever quite getting away. Aravinda de Silva had already taken 3 for 42. He then came in with both the openers who had defined the tournament back in the pavilion and made 107 not out. Sri Lanka won by seven wickets with 22 balls to spare.
No host had won a World Cup before, and no side had won one chasing. Sri Lanka did both in an evening. The manner of it mattered as much as the result: within a year the fifteen-over assault had stopped being a Sri Lankan eccentricity and become the standard way to start a one-day innings.