| MUMBAI:
The International Cricket Council (ICC) Cricket World Cup opening ceremony will
be held on 17 February 2011 in Bangladesh. The opening match, meanwhile, will
take place in the same country on 19 February. This
was one of the recommendations made by The Central Organising Committee (COC)
for the ICC Cricket World Cup (ICC CWC) 2011. They met in Mumbai today morning
to continue preparations for the tournament.
The
meeting, under the chairmanship of ICC VP Sharad Pawar, was attended by ICC CEO
Haroon Lorgat and representatives of the three countries set to stage the event.
These are Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. Pakistan,
previously the tournament’s fourth host nation, was not present and will
not attend any future meetings of the COC following the settlement made with the
ICC last week whereby it was agreed that the Pakistan Cricket Board would be relieved
of its obligations as a co-host. The
other recommendations made by COC include to approve the operational plan and
the event budget; to fix the venue inspections in the three host nations for October/November;
and to announce the full match schedule and list of venues in Mumbai on 9 November
which is when its next meeting takes place. The
recommendations of the COC meeting will now be communicated to the ICC Finance
Committee and ICC board for consideration. Tournament
director Professor Ratnakar Shetty says, “This was another productive meeting
and we have continued to make real progress. We are operating at full steam ahead
for what should be a great event in 2011 and there is a great spirit of cooperation
among the hosts and the ICC.” | 
