Team India will lock horns with South Africa in their curtain raiser for the 2019 World Cup on June 4 instead of June 2 as the BCCI will have to maintain a mandatory 15-day gap between the Indian Premier League (IPL) final and International assignment as per the Lodha Committee recommendation. 

The 2019 World Cup will be held in the UK from May 30 to July 14. The issue was discussed during the ICC Chief Executives Meeting in Kolkata on Tuesday.

Talking about the matter, a senior BCCI official said, “The 2019 IPL will be played between March 29 and May 19. But we need to maintain a 15-day gap and World Cup starts on May 30. Therefore as per 15-day gap, we could have only played on June 4. Earlier, we were scheduled to start on June 2 but we couldn’t have played on that day. South Africa is our first opponents. The CEC agreed and the matter has been referred to the ICC board.”

Interestingly, most of the ICC’s marquee tournaments have always started with an Indo-Pak fixture which is always expected to be a sell-out. It happened in the 2015 World Cup in Australia (at Adelaide) and 2017 Champions Trophy in the UK (in Birmingham).

The official also added, “This is the first time Indo-Pak match won’t be a starting affair. Since the format will be a round robin affair (all teams playing each other like 1992).”

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Among the other decisions that were finalized included the FTP for the next five year cycle from 2019-23. The official said, “As we had decided, India will play a maximum 309 days of international cricket in this cycle across formats, a reduction of 92 days from the earlier cycle. However, the number of home Test matches will increase from 15 to 19. All these Tests will be part of the World Test Championship.”