India, Bangla in World Cup opener

Nov. 9: India launch their 2011 World Cup campaign against Bangladesh in Dhaka on February 19 — the opening fixture of the event — and the country will host its first match on the next day in Chennai, the International Cricket Council announced here on Monday. Placed in Group B, alongside South Africa, England, West Indies, Bangladesh, Ireland and Netherlands, India will host 29 out of a total of 49 games of the quadrennial tournament, including the final and a semifinal.

Lanka, set to host the second biggest chunk of 12 matches in the event, will have their first game on February 20 with the home side taking on Canada.

The Lankans are in Group A, which also has defending champions Australia, Pakistan, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Canada and Kenya. Bangladesh, which will host two quarterfinals, will have eight matches in all to organise.

The Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai will host the final of the February-March event while Mohali will host one of the semifinals along with two other matches. Ahmedabad gets to host a quarterfinal and two other games. Kolkata and Delhi will host one India and three other matches each while Nagpur, Chennai and Bengaluru get one India game each. The 2011 event will be a week shorter than the 2007 edition, which was held in the Caribbean.

"The announcement of the match schedule for the ICC World Cup 2011 is an exciting development as not only does it allow all our stakeholders to start planning their tours, but it will also remind everyone that we are getting closer to the staging of the biggest event in world cricket," ICC vice president and organising committee chairman Sharad Pawar said.

The fixtures are set up in such a way that Pakistan — denied hosting rights owing to security concerns — get to play all their group matches in Sri Lanka. Said Pawar, "I am confident that the cricket-loving population will welcome any country and there is no exception."

Age Correspondent

Mumbai

 

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/3575" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: &lt;a&gt; &lt;em&gt; &lt;strong&gt; &lt;cite&gt; &lt;code&gt; &lt;ul&gt; &lt;ol&gt; &lt;li&gt; &lt;dl&gt; &lt;dt&gt; &lt;dd&gt;</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-832335556676f287226e21ccfef07f7e" value="form-832335556676f287226e21ccfef07f7e" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80063683" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

No Articles Found

I want to begin with a little story that was told to me by a leading executive at Aptech. He was exercising in a gym with a lot of younger people.

Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen didn’t make the cut. Neither did Shaji Karun’s Piravi, which bagged 31 international awards.