India at the Cricket World Cup: 1975 to 2023

India have won the fifty-over World Cup twice, in 1983 and 2011, and have lost the final three times, in 2003, 2023 and — with the women's side — 2005 and 2017. They have hosted or co-hosted the tournament four times. They have also gone out in the first round twice, once as defending finalists in all but name.

The shape of the record is unusual. India were poor at the competition for its first eight years, won it from nowhere, then spent two decades as a good side that lost knockout matches, then became the best one-day team in the world and lost a home final. No other major nation's World Cup history swings that hard.

This page runs through each campaign in order, with the matches that decided them. The tournament's own structure, format changes and full honour board are covered at the fifty-over World Cup.

Gavaskar's 36, and the first two tournaments

India's first World Cup match, at Lord's in June 1975 against England, produced one of the strangest innings in the competition's history. Chasing 335 in sixty overs, Sunil Gavaskar batted through to make 36 not out from 174 balls. India finished on 132 for 3. Nobody has ever produced a satisfactory explanation, and Gavaskar's own accounts have varied.

The context matters more than the anecdote. India had no one-day cricket at home in 1975 and almost no experience of the format; the domestic game was four-day cricket and nothing else. The side's instinct in a sixty-over match was to bat as though a draw were available. India beat East Africa in that tournament and lost their other matches, and in 1979 in England they lost all three, including to Sri Lanka, who were not then a Test nation.

Tunbridge Wells and Lord's, June 1983

Nothing in the two previous tournaments suggested what happened in 1983. India were 66-1 outsiders in some books. Their group included the West Indies, who had won both previous World Cups and were the strongest side in the world by a distance.

The tournament turned on two matches. At Tunbridge Wells, against Zimbabwe, India were 17 for 5 when Kapil Dev came in and made 175 not out. No television cameras were present — the match was not covered live — so the innings survives in scorecards, radio commentary and the memories of a few hundred spectators. India won by 31 runs and stayed in the competition.

The final, at Lord's on 25 June, was played on the assumption that the West Indies would win. India were bowled out for 183. Mohinder Amarnath made 26 and then took three wickets, and was named man of the match. Madan Lal took three. Kapil Dev, running back over his shoulder at midwicket, caught Viv Richards. The West Indies were dismissed for 140 in 52 overs and India won by 43 runs.

The consequences were commercial as much as sporting. Television and sponsorship money moved towards Indian cricket in the years that followed, the 1987 tournament was taken out of England for the first time, and the board's finances changed permanently. That shift, and where the money went, is traced in the guide to BCCI structure. The tournament itself is set out at the 1983 World Cup.

1987 and 1996: hosting, and losing at home

India and Pakistan co-hosted in 1987. India topped their group and lost the semi-final to England at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai on 5 November by 35 runs, England making 254 for 6 with 115 from Graham Gooch, who swept Ravi Shastri and Maninder Singh relentlessly and effectively decided the match doing it.

The 1992 tournament in Australia and New Zealand was poor. India again co-hosted in 1996, with Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and reached the semi-finals, where the tournament produced its worst afternoon.

At Eden Gardens on 13 March, in front of a crowd reported at over 110,000, Sri Lanka made 251 for 8. India collapsed from 98 for 1 to 120 for 8. Sections of the crowd set fires and threw bottles, the players were taken off, and the match referee Clive Lloyd awarded the match to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka went on to win the tournament, a campaign described in the guide to Sri Lanka's 1996 title.

Eden Gardens changed how Indian venues are policed at World Cup matches, and it is the reason ground regulations at major Indian internationals are as restrictive as they are.

2003: the best India side not to win it

The 1999 tournament in England produced individual performances rather than a run — Rahul Dravid finished as the leading run-scorer, and Sourav Ganguly and Dravid put on a stand of 318 against Sri Lanka at Taunton — but India did not reach the semi-finals.

Four years later in South Africa they nearly won it. India lost their second match to Australia and then won eight in a row, with Sachin Tendulkar in the best tournament form of his career. He finished with 673 runs and was named player of the tournament.

The final, at the Wanderers in Johannesburg on 23 March 2003, was over early. Ricky Ponting made 140 not out and Damien Martyn 88 not out in an unbroken stand of 234; Australia made 359 for 2. India were bowled out for 234 and lost by 125 runs. Zaheer Khan's first over, which went for fifteen, is usually where the post-mortems start.

2007, and the shortest campaign

India went to the West Indies in 2007 with Tendulkar, Ganguly, Dravid as captain, Virender Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh, and were out inside eight days. They lost the opening group match to Bangladesh, beat Bermuda, and then lost to Sri Lanka. Two defeats in a four-team group left them behind Sri Lanka and Bangladesh on the table and eliminated before the Super Eights.

The reaction in India was severe, and it produced two changes that mattered. Greg Chappell left the coaching job. And the board, looking at a home audience that had switched off, backed a new Twenty20 competition — the sequence that led to the Indian Premier League within a year.

Wankhede, 2 April 2011

India co-hosted again in 2011 and won it, becoming the first country to win a World Cup final at home.

The campaign was not smooth. India tied with England at Bengaluru and lost to South Africa in the group stage. They beat Australia in the quarter-final at Ahmedabad and Pakistan in the semi-final at Mohali, a match watched in both countries on a scale that no bilateral fixture reaches — the wider context is in the guide to the India-Pakistan rivalry.

In the final at the Wankhede Stadium, Sri Lanka made 274 for 6. India lost Tendulkar and Sehwag early, Gautam Gambhir made 97 from 122 balls, and MS Dhoni, who had promoted himself above Yuvraj Singh, made 91 not out from 79 and finished the match with a six. India reached 277 for 4 in 48.2 overs and won by six wickets. Yuvraj Singh was player of the tournament; Dhoni was player of the match, and that innings is examined in detail in the account of Dhoni as a finisher. The full tournament is covered at the 2011 World Cup.

Three semi-finals and a final: 2015 to 2023

India have reached the last four at every tournament since and won one knockout match in three attempts.

In 2015 they won all their group matches and lost the semi-final to Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground. In 2019 they topped the group table and lost the semi-final to New Zealand at Old Trafford by 18 runs, a match interrupted and finished on the reserve day; India were 24 for 4 and 92 for 6 before Ravindra Jadeja and Dhoni added 116.

The 2023 tournament at home was the most complete campaign any side has produced without winning. India won all nine league matches and the semi-final. Virat Kohli made 765 runs, the most anyone has scored in a single edition, with three hundreds and eight scores of fifty or more. Mohammed Shami took 24 wickets in seven matches and finished as the leading wicket-taker.

Then, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on 19 November, India made 240 and Australia chased it down for the loss of four wickets with 42 balls remaining. Travis Head made 137 and was player of the match. Kohli was player of the series. The tournament record is at the 2023 World Cup, and the long-running contest that decided it is covered in the guide to the India-Australia rivalry.

The Twenty20 record

India's shortest-format World Cup record is better than the fifty-over one in one respect: both finals they have won were tight.

India won the inaugural World Twenty20 in September 2007 at the Wanderers, beating Pakistan by five runs in a final decided by the last over. It was Dhoni's first tournament as captain, with a squad from which most of the senior batters had withdrawn or been left out. The tournament is covered at the 2007 World Twenty20.

India lost the 2014 final to Sri Lanka in Mirpur, lost semi-finals in 2016 and 2022, and won the title again on 29 June 2024 at Kensington Oval in Barbados, beating South Africa by seven runs. India made 176 for 7, Kohli making 76; South Africa were 169 for 8, Heinrich Klaasen making 52 and Hardik Pandya taking three for 20. Details are at the 2024 T20 World Cup.

The other ICC senior trophies sit alongside these, and India's record in the shorter knockout event is covered in the guide to Champions Trophy history.

What the whole record adds up to

Three things are visible across fifty years.

The first is that India's tournament results have tracked the strength of its domestic one-day cricket rather than the strength of its Test side. The 1975 and 1979 teams contained excellent Test cricketers who had never played a competitive limited-overs match at home. The 2023 team had grown up on the Vijay Hazare Trophy and the franchise league.

The second is that hosting has not been the advantage it looks. India have won one of the four tournaments they have hosted or co-hosted, and the three failures — 1987, 1996 and 2023 — all came after topping the group. Home crowds and known conditions have not converted into knockout results, and the 2023 final was played on a surface India had not encountered earlier in the competition.

The third is that the women's side has now added the title the men's team could not defend, winning at Navi Mumbai in November 2025 after losing three league matches. That campaign is described in the guide to how India's women's team was built, and the wider domestic picture is on the cricket in India hub.

Sources and method

Scores, dates, venues, margins and individual figures on this page come from ICC tournament records and match reports and were checked against published scorecards on ESPNcricinfo and Cricbuzz where a figure needed a second source. Crowd figures are as reported by the ground or the tournament organisers and are approximate by nature.

Where a match is described rather than tabulated — the 1996 semi-final, the 1983 final — the description follows contemporary match reports and the official scorecard, not later retellings. The three concluding judgements about domestic cricket, hosting and knockout results are editorial readings of the results, not calculated findings, and the page does not attempt to explain the 1975 innings at Lord's, because the explanations in circulation conflict.