ICC agrees new schedule
MUMBAI: World Cup 2011 organisers on Tuesday handed out Pakistan’s share of the tournament schedule with the 14 matches originally set for the troubled nation split between India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
The saga over Pakistan’s status as co-host of the 2011 event has seen threats of legal action and even moves to have games played in the UAE and was prompted by the deteriorating security situation in the Asian nation.
Now 29 of the 49 games will be played in India, including eight which were set for Pakistan, 12 will be in Sri Lanka (including four
from Pakistan) and eight in Bangladesh (two moved from Pakistan). A total of 13 venues will be used with eight in India, three in Sri Lanka and two in Bangladesh.
Bangladesh will now stage two of the four quarter-finals, with
India and Sri Lanka hosting one each. Under the previous arrangement each of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka were to have staged one each The two semi-finals will be staged in India and Sri Lanka, with the final in India.
The meeting of the central organising committee was chaired by ICC vice-president Sharad Pawar and attended by ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat and representatives of Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. Pakistan was invited to the meeting but no Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) representative attended. It was also agreed that the tournament secretariat will be based in Mumbai rather than Pakistan.
Tournament director Ratnakar Shetty said: “We had a good, productive meeting. There was a recognition that there is much hard work to be done but we are confident we are now well on the way, with operational plans in place to become effective from the start of August. Moving forward, the COC will meet on a regular basis with everyone committed to a successful event, something we are confident we can achieve.”
The recommendations of the committee will now go to the International Cricket Council
(ICC) board. In June, the ICC stressed that the Pakistan Cricket Board remained a World Cup co-host and would still receive a hosting fee of $750,000 per match — $10.5 million in total.