The schedule for the 2023 World Cup will be unveiled during the World Test Championship final at The Oval, BCCI secretary Jay Shah has said. The board has prepared a list of more than a dozen venues across India, and the final shortlist will be shared with the ICC soon.
Shah made these comments during a media briefing after the BCCI’s special general meeting in Ahmedabad which will host the IPL final on Sunday. While the ten-team World Cup is set to be played between October 5 and November 19, the BCCI is yet to finalise the schedule, with just about four months left for the start of the tournament.
A total of 48 matches, including the three knockout games, are set to be played across the 46-day period. Ahmedabad aside, the original shortlist of cities on BCCI list comprised: Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Dharamsala, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Indore, Rajkot and Mumbai and Trivandrum. It is understood that Nagpur and Pune, too, are under consideration. It is likely that the league matches will be hosted across 10 cities, with two more cities staging the warm-up fixtures preceding the main tournament.
Asia Cup to be formally discussed at ACC meeting
Shah, who is also the current president of the Asian Cricket Council, said an emergent meeting of the ACC will be held to finalise whether the hybrid model proposed by the PCB for the 2023 Asia Cup is feasible.
On Sunday, Shah will be meeting his counterparts from Sri Lanka Cricket, Bangladesh Cricket Board, and Afghanistan Cricket Board to informally discuss their views on the Asia Cup.
Pakistan are the hosts of this year’s Asia Cup, scheduled for September, but with India declining to travel there, the ACC has been looking at alternatives. Recently, the PCB had suggested a hybrid model for the six-team tournament, where four of the 13 matches will be held in Pakistan. Both India and Pakistan are grouped together along with Nepal. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are part of the second group.
The biggest challenge about the hybrid model concerns the travel involved. Shah said “two or three countries” had sent in their views, which will be formally discussed at the ACC meeting in the next ten days.
Shah said, in his capacity as ACC chairman, he wanted the Asia Cup to go ahead this year. The tournament has not been be hosted in Pakistan or India since 2008 due to the political differences between both countries.