Cricket/ World Cup: Like some of the best ideas, the first Cricket World Cup was thought up on the train home from work.

Rewind to 1972 and Ben Brocklehurst is as usual sitting on the 5.15 out of Charing Cross station. As he flicks through the evening paper his eye is caught by a story on the financial plight of English cricket. Brocklehurst's interest is more than passing as the former county cricketer built The Cricketerpublishing business based on his love of the game.

"I remember reading a copy of the London Evening Standardwhich had a report on how the counties had lost £168,000 between them," Brocklehurst, now 87, tells The Irish Times. "It got me thinking how they could get it back again".

Brocklehurst was familiar with organising cricket events as he had established a number of national competitions under The Cricketerbanner.

The one-day game was first played in English county cricket in 1963 with teams competing for the Gillette Cup. But by the mid-70s the international version was still in its infancy. Only 18 games had been played before the first World Cup in 1975.

Brocklehurst had the ear of some very influential people. "I had a conversation with Billy Griffiths about a Gillette Cup-style competition for the international teams to be played every other year with a final at Lords and the proceeds for which would go to the counties".

The proposal then hit a roadblock, becoming tied up in the labyrinthine politics of English cricket administration.

"There was a sub-committee at Lord's who thought it a bloody stupid idea and didn't want anything to do with it. I think they thought I was doing it to promote the magazine."

Undeterred, Brocklehurst drew up extensive financial plans to the extent of finding a company keen to sponsor it.

Wills was lined up as title sponsor, a deal negotiated by Brocklehurst for £50,000.

Tired of battling the mandarins of Lord's, he passed to the ICC, the global governing body, who, "made it happen in a month".

The ICC advertised for their own sponsor, eventually selling the title rights to insurance company Prudential for £100,000.

The make-up of the first tournament reflected the political and cricketing climate of the day. Eight teams were divided into two groups. Each of the major cricketing nations were there apart from South Africa, who had been banned from international competition in 1970. They were to be absent from every subsequent World Cup until 1992.

So the big six of England, Australia, West Indies, India, Pakistan and New Zealand were joined by two smaller cricketing nations.

The 1996 World champions Sri Lanka were a marginal force in '75 and yet to be admitted to the elite group of test-playing nations. The other place went to a team playing under the banner of East Africa, consisting of players from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.

It was a fortnight that signalled the beginning of cricket's modern era. For the first time the best players in the world could perform against each other in a condensed period of time in the same country, which then as now, was impossible to achieve using five-day test matches as the benchmark.

The tournament exceeded even the most lofty expectations. More than 158,000 people came to watch over its two weeks duration, generating £200,000. The winners, West Indies, received a cheque for £4,000 and Australia £2,000 for runners up. The beaten semi-finalists England and New Zealand got £1,000 each.

By comparison, when Australia won the last ICC World Cup in 2003, Ricky Ponting's men took away a cheque for $2million from a total prize fund of $5million.

Prudential's £100,000 sponsorship of the '75 tournament pales with the vast sums paid by global corporations this time around. The TV rights for the next two World Cups, in 2011 and 2015, recently sold for $1.1billion.

Not bad for an idea dreamed up on the 5.15 out of Charing Cross.