World Cup 2011

Cricket World Cup is held in every four years. It is one of the most viewed sports event of the world. England hosted the first World Cup Cricket in the year 1975.

Australia has won the World Cup five times whereas West Indies have won twice. India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan had won once.

The last World Cup was in the year 2007 and was held in West Indies. There were 16 teams and in the final match Australia defeated Sri Lanka and retained the championship.

The 2011 World Cup are co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and 14 teams are participating. The venues are spread over the three hosting countries.

Pakistan was also supposed to co-host the World Cup this time but, following the attack on Sri Lanka team at Lahore, the ICC decided to remove Pakistan from the list of hosting countries. The organizing committee was situated in Lahore and subsequently the same was shifted to Mumbai, India.

The ICC World Cup trophy is a running trophy from the year 1999. The original trophy is kept at the ICC headquarters in Dubai and the names of all the earlier winners are inscribed on it. A replica will be presented to the winning team. The ICC has allotted 10 million US Dollars to conduct the tournament out of which 7.48 dollars will be the total prize money.

A ten year old elephant Stumpy is the official mascot for he 2011 Cricket World cup. It was unveiled in the year 2010 by the Indian players Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni and the Sri Lankan player Kumar Sangakara.

The official song of this great event “De Ghuma Ke” is sung in Bengali, Hindi and Sinhala. The song which was composed by Sankar, Ehsaan and Loy is sung by Sankar Mahadevan and Divya Kumar.

India’s great cricketer Sachin Tendulkar is the Event Ambassador for World Cup Cricket – 2011.