MUMBAI, (Reuters) – A majority of the 2011 World Cup matches will be held in India after Pakistan was stripped of co-hosting rights over security concerns.
India would host 29 of the tournament’s 49 matches, including a semi-final and the final, International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat told reporters on Tuesday following a World Cup organising committee meeting.
Sri Lanka will host the other semi-final.
India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will remain as co-hosts of the quadrennial event after Pakistan was dropped over uncertainty created by last month’s ambush on the Sri Lankan cricket team’s bus by armed gunmen in Lahore.
The 2011 World Cup Secretariat had also been shifted from Lahore to the Indian board’s offices in Mumbai, Lorgat announced.
Pakistan was initially allotted 14 matches, while the World Cup final stays in India as was originally planned.
The matches in India will be played across eight venues, Sri Lanka has 12 matches at three venues and Bangladesh eight at two venues.
“The planning at this stage… is for the opening ceremony to be held in Bangladesh on February 18 and the opening match to be on February 19,” Lorgat said.
“There is also planning for two quarter-finals in Bangladesh, one in India and one in Sri Lanka,” he added.
“The re-organising of the central organising committee is actually quite simple,” Lorgat said. “Pakistan falls out of that.
The remaining three host countries will form the central organising committee with the ICC represented on that as well.”
Lorgat said a World Cup operation planning working group had been established, including a security wing.
“We recognise that instilling confidence on the security arrangement we have in place is important,” he said.
South Asia previously hosted World Cups in 1987 and 1996.
