Cricket’s World Cup has to be the most bloated and seemingly futile of all major sports. This year’s competition involves an enduring 42 group matches lasting 30 days before we get to the quarter finals. 

The next stage will, most likely, feature the top eight sides and will allow hosts New Zealand and Australia to choose where to play regardless of where they finish in their respective groups. 

Such a long-winded process to reach a somewhat foregone conclusion is to placate TV demands and ensure that India, cricket’s sugar-daddy, doesn’t fail to make the next stage as in the Caribbean in 2007.

The 2011 event wasn’t exactly spectacular. Of the 42 group matches only five produced a victory by less than 25 runs or three wickets (a measure of a close contest), though one was a tie. 

That India won, however, guaranteed both a financial windfall and a stay of execution for a format under threat from Twenty20. 

Yet in this rather pessimistic introduction it should be noted that the World Cup has proved to be cricket’s key innovator ever since its inauguration 40 years ago, and one of those key events that we can use to chart the sport’s development.

The emergence and then prominence of One Day Internationals (ODI) is also the main vessel through which we can observe the transfer of cricket’s economic and political order from England to the subcontinent, notably India.

Before the first World Cup in 1975, the ODI was an atypical fixture. Australia and England had played the first recognised international contest in Melbourne in 1971, a consequence of a rain ruined five-day Test. 

Australia would wait until January 1975 before they played another home ODI match. 

England organised the first one-day series, adding three matches to the 1972 Ashes contests. One-day cricket was an established and lucrative part of the domestic season, yet there was a reluctance to take the format seriously at international level. 

New Zealand hosted their first ODI in February 1973 against Pakistan and in the same year the West Indies played two matches on their tour of England. 

India waited until 1974 when, alongside Pakistan, they had to be persuaded to play two games on their 1974 visit to England.

There had been proposals for a world competition as early as 1969. English administrators though expressed doubts, namely “over public interest in (say) a match between West Indies and Australia played in this country.”

The fears of the English Board proved unwarranted when Headingley closed its gates for the first time since 1966 for the match between Australia and Pakistan, while 26,000 spectators crammed into Lord’s to watch the West Indies defeat Australia and be crowned as cricket’s maiden world champions. 

Following the first World Cup, ODIs would become part of all future tours to England. 

Yet, the uptake of one-day cricket at an international level remained a gradual process. Neither Pakistan (October 1976) or West Indies (March 1977) hosted an ODI until after the first World Cup, whilst India waited until November 1981 before it staged its first home fixture. 

Coloured clothing, fielding restrictions, floodlights, the white ball and improvised batting were mere visions of the most optimistic prophet, for no country even had a specialised one-day squad; they all just fielded their Test side. 

The World Cup, though, would become established on the cricketing calendar, being played, like its football counterpart and the Olympics, every four years. Wisden described the 1979 competition, won again by the West Indies, as “a great success.” 

By the third tournament in 1983, sponsorship had risen tenfold and the number of matches had doubled, as had the numbers paying to watch the games. It was becoming both spectacle and business opportunity.

An expected third successive West Indian victory at Lord’s in 1983 was prevented by an Indian side that had previously won only one World Cup match — against East Africa in 1975. 

The 1983 tournament made its first million-pound profit and through India’s victory marked the origins of the transferal of influence from Lord’s to the subcontinent, and the prominence towards one-day cricket. 

Their triumph alerted politicians to the attractiveness of international success. 

The prime minister Indira Gandhi forwarded a telegram to the players saying that “my slogan is India can do it. Thank you for living up to it.” 

This slogan, along with the players’ photographs, was displayed on state-owned petrol stations throughout the country. 

The ability to amass large sums of money from these tournaments raised the issue of maldistribution of income. West Indian captain Clive Lloyd (pictured) complained that his squad received little recognition from their board, apart from an agreed fee of £350 per player, after they won in 1975. 

Resentment about relative low pay played into the hands of Australian media magnate Kerry Packer who challenged the establishment with his brand of World Series Cricket that featured “super-Tests” and ODIs between the world’s greatest players. 

The emergence of Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe as full members of the International Cricket Council was largely assessed on their fortunes in World Cups. 

The tournament has further been used to draw attention to political difficulties in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and Kenya where matches have all been cancelled. 

While it was used as a force for reconciliation when welcoming South Africa back to the international fold in 1992.

All of which suggests that the next phase of cricket’s development could come out of this tournament. 

We’ve just got to try and sustain interest through a month of less meaningful group matches.