ODI World Cup 2023: Big Indian cricket centres which didn't get a match

NEW DELHI: The International Cricket Council (ICC) and host BCCI announced the ODI World Cup 2023 schedule on Tuesday, finalising 10 venues for the event beginning October 5.


The chosen venues include Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Dharamsala, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai and Pune.

Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram will host warm-up matches.

But established cricket centres like Mohali, Nagpur, Indore, Rajkot and Ranchi missed out on hosting any of the matches.

The matches are allocated zone wise and metro cities usually get to host the World Cup games.

Though it is an ICC event, the world body tends to go with venues proposed by the local organising committee, which is the BCCI in this case. A draft schedule was shared with the ICC earlier.

Indore, which regularly gets to host international games and staged an ODI and Test earlier this year, is among the major centres to have missed out on a World Cup fixture.

Though the ICC doesn't put a limit on the number of venues, the lesser the venues the lesser the logistical challenges in organising an event which these days lasts for a month and a half and features as many as 10 teams.

Ahmedabad will host the World Cup opener, the final, as well as the big marquee clash of the tournament -- India versus Pakistan -- on October 15, along with other matches.

Barring Hyderabad, all the chosen World Cup venues will get five games each.

Guwahati, the lone venue for international cricket in the Northeast, will host warm-up matches, including one between India and England, but not any of the main matches.


Kolkata edged out Chennai and Bangalore in the race to host a World Cup semifinal. Chennai and Bengaluru were also in the race to host one of the semi-finals but the BCCI and ICC awarded the game to the historic venue in Kolkata - the Eden Gardens.

The other semifinal will be held in Mumbai.

Overall, Kolkata will host five matches of the World Cup including the second semifinal on November 15 and India versus South Africa (November 5) in the group stage.


If India make it to the semis, they will play in Mumbai. However if they are up against Pakistan in the semis then the match will be moved to Kolkata and the other semi-final will be scheduled for Mumbai.

Several high-profile matches have been held in the Mohali stadium in the past, including the World Cup semi-finals in 1996 and 2011, but this time the venue was not included in the final list.

Dharamsala will host five matches, even though Mohali has a much bigger stadium in terms of capacity.