South Africa: Host of ICC Champions Trophy 2009

(This entry was originally published on Monday, March 16th, 2009)

ICC Champions Trophy 2009 is set to take place in South Africa, starting from September 24. The 12-day long tournament will be concluded with the final match being held on October 5. On Monday, ICC confirmed South Africa as the venue for this year’s Champions Trophy which had originally been supposed to take place in Pakistan last year before ICC postponed the tournament on security concern. Sri Lankan capital Colombo was then considered to be the alternate venue for the tournament, but in fear of bad weather in September and October, ICC executive committee recommended South Africa as the host of Champions Trophy last week.

ICC board members discussed about the matter in a teleconference today (Monday), before taking a unanimous decision on this regard. ICC picked up two preferred venues: Wanderers stadium in Johannesburg and Centurion located in Pretoria- for the tournament which features top 8 test playing nations. ICC Champions Trophy, which was originally known as Mini World Cup, is the second-most important tournament based on ODI format of cricket and is only second to World Cup in terms of importance and significance. The knock-out event will see the losing side of every game being eliminated from the tournament with the winning side only progressing.

Related article:

Reuters