ICC inspects Motera stadium in Ahmedabad for World Cup 2011

AHMEDABAD - A nine-member team of the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Tuesday visited the Sardar Patel stadium in Motera, on the outskirts of Ahmedabad to inspect the venue where three 2011 World Cup matches are to be played.

The ICC team inspected the pitch and overall condition of the stadium after undertaking a similar assessment tour of Bangladesh that is jointly hosting the cricket World Cup with India and Sri Lanka.

“Really lucky to meet people that would be involved running cricket World Cup 2011, to start to discuss plans for the event and to see for ourselves the facilities that would be in place and to discuss how we may best use those. As I said, this is the first trip and there will be further inspections. We will have further dialogue in the time to come. So this is really very much the initial planning stage,” said Chris Tetley, ICC event manager.

The team made a round of the stadium and later met Gujarat state police officials and discussed security arrangements.

The Motera Stadium boasts of world class playing and practice facilities and has a crowd capacity of more than fifty thousand.

“I’ll comment as a player’s perspective and that’s confined in the planning area and the facilities you have got in here, which is wonderful. They are terrific from our perspective, there are couple of things that need tailoring, but there aren’t great dramas here at all and we are very impressed by the standard, outfield, wickets, and practice facilities etc,” said Tim May, Chief Executive Officer of Federation of ICC.

The team heads to inspect the cricket grounds in New Delhi and Mumbai later.

Sri Lanka will be on the third stage of their inspection after finishing their rounds from India.

Mumbai will stage the final match of the 2011 one-day World Cup.

The local organising committee last month finalised venues for India’s 29 matches, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) said in a statement. A total of 49 matches will be played in the three countries during the event.

Mohali will stage a semi-final and Ahmedabad a quarter-final. Those two venues and Mumbai will also stage two other games.

New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Nagpur and Kolkata will stage four matches apiece, including one involving India. (ANI)