The Cricket World Cup returns to England as one of the most lucrative and most watched events in all of sport. The tournament is now the third biggest stand-alone world championship in any sport, below football and rugby, according to Sportcal, a sports market intelligence company. It will generate about £400 million for the International Cricket Council in broadcasting rights alone. For Steve Elworthy, the managing director of the 2019 World Cup, planning for this event began in early 2014. A year before the 2015 World Cup, Elworthy went to Australia and New Zealand to see the organising committee’s preparations. The London 2012 Olympic Games had shaped what Elworthy believed was possible. “What really recalibrated the way that events were run – not necessarily commercialised but probably an element of that – was the Olympics,” he said. Elworthy, who has about 100 staff for the competition, used both the Women’s World Cup and Champions Trophy in 2017 – two tournaments that were widely praised – to gauge what was needed to make the World Cup even better. The competition will feature open-air fan parks at cities around England and Wales. Demand for tickets has been high, with 3.2 m applications for the total…