Cricket News
3 teams who played every World Cup but are yet to lift the trophy
Playing a cricket World Cup for a team or a player can be a dream. There are many national sides across the globe that are not getting enough chances to play a World Cup across sports. On the other hand, there are teams across sports who have featured in every edition of the showpiece event. Meanwhile, in cricket, the top teams are certain to play World Cups.
The low-ranked teams go through the struggle of playing the regional qualifiers first. If they make it to the top, they get the chance to play the World Cup qualifier, one that is being played right now in Zimbabwe. Only a few teams out of all those qualify for the World Cup. Meanwhile, in this listicle, we will discuss three teams that played every World Cup but are yet to win the title.
Three teams that played every World Cup but never won
South Africa Cricket Team (Image Credit: Twitter)
1. South Africa
The Proteas missed out on the World Cups from 1975 to 1987. This was the time when they were barred from playing international cricket due to their racist policies against black people. Since their re-admission into international cricket, they played every World Cup, including the T20 World Cup from 2007.
However, despite reaching the knockouts in almost every edition (They failed to reach the semis in the 2019 ODI WC and T20 World Cup 2022), the team failed to reach the final even once. This is the reason they are yet to lift the title. Last year, they were touted as potential winners in Australia but a loss to the Netherlands ended their hopes.
New Zealand (Source: Twitter)
2. New Zealand
The Blackcaps are the only team to play every edition of the ODI and T20 World Cup. In ODI World Cups, they reached the semis and quarterfinals from 1975 to 2011. For the first time in their history, they played a final in 2015, followed by another final in 2019. However, on both occasions, they lost the title clash.
On the other hand, the team played only one final, i.e in 2021. Apart from that, they played semis in 2007, 2016, and 2022. They missed out on playing the knockouts in 2009, 2010, 2012, and 2014.
Bangladesh vs England (Image source: Twitter)
3. Bangladesh
The Asian Tigers played their first ODI World Cup in 1999. In the seventh edition of the tournament, they registered a famous win against the 1992 winner, Pakistan. Since then, the Green Brigade, Bangladesh have played every World Cup as they have been one of the top teams in ODI cricket. Not to forget, they beat India in 2007 and England in 2015 which resulted in India and England crashing out in the first round.
Notably, both India and England went on to win the World Cups in 2011 and 2019 respectively. In the T20 World Cup, they are yet to miss out on the showpiece event in the shortest format of the game