Overview of the tournament

The 1992 World Cup featured the seven Test teams of the day, South Africa, who would play their first Test in 22 years in the West Indies a month after the World Cup, and Zimbabwe, who would play their first Test match later in 1992.
Australia
England
India
New Zealand
Pakistan
South Africa
Sri Lanka
West Indies
Zimbabwe
The 1992 World Cup was won by Pakistan, captained by Imran Khan, who beat England by 22 runs in the final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), to see the "Cornered tigers" and Imran Khan lift the trophy. Pakistan won just one of their first five matches and only qualified for the semi-finals by beating the previously undefeated New Zealand side in their final round robin game. In one of the games Pakistan looked set to lose with England on 24-1 chasing Pakistan's score of 74 all out, but were saved by a spell of rain, which left the game as a no-result, the sides taking one point each. Without that point Pakistan would not have qualified for the semi-finals. New Zealand and South Africa were the losing semi-finalists.
South Africa's semi-final against England ended in controversial circumstances when, after a rain delay, the rule in use for revising target scores in rain-affected matches revised their target from 22 runs from 13 balls to an impossible 21 runs from one ball. This rule was replaced for One-day International matches in Australia after the World Cup, and it was eventually superseded by the Duckworth-Lewis method for the 1999 World Cup onwards. The revised D/L target for the match would have been four runs to tie or five to win from the final ball.
A notable feature of this World Cup was the innovative tactics employed by New Zealand captain Martin Crowe, who opened his team's bowling with a spin bowler, Dipak Patel, rather than with a fast bowler, as is usual practice. Another innovation was the opening of the New Zealand batting by pinch hitters.
New Zealand lost only two matches in the tournament, a Group match and their Semi-final, both against Pakistan.