ICC World Cup festivities kick off in London today
The Opening Party will capture the very essence of what makes this tournament so special.
LONDON (Web Desk) – The 2019 Cricket World Cup will be officially launched with an Opening Party on The Mall on Wednesday.
The live coverage of the event would take place at 5:00-6:00pm BST (British Standard Time) i.e. 9:00-10:00pm PST (Pakistan Standard Time).
The tournament, which takes place across England and Wales over the next seven weeks, gets underway on Thursday, when England play South Africa at The Oval.
Pakistan in its first match of tournament will play against West Indies on Friday.
Ten teams are participating in the event. The group stage will see all the teams playing in a round-robin league, with the top four teams qualifying for the semifinals.
According to a press release by the International Cricket Committee (ICC), around "4,000 fans" in the stadium, along with a "global live broadcast audience", will be "treated to a music and sporting spectacular" to start off the cricketing festivities.
"The Opening Party will capture the very essence of what makes this tournament so special and will be hugely exciting for the fans that are lucky enough to attend but also across broadcast we will show the world what they have to look forward to over the next 45 days of cricket action," said Steve Elworthy, Managing Director of the ICC Men s Cricket World Cup 2019.
"The Mall, with Buckingham Palace in the background, is synonymous with some of the biggest events held in the UK and is instantly recognisable to everyone around the globe. It will be a fitting celebration of a World Cup, cricket and sport with diversity at its core," Steve Elworthy added.
According to reports, ICC have decided to keep captains away from at the opening ceremony in order to keep the players fresh for the tournament proper, that begins the next day.
Security amid moderate threat
Britain may be dealing with a national threat level of "severe" but officials are confident they have the security measures in place for a Cricket World Cup in England and Wales rated a "moderate" security risk.
Recent terror attacks in cricket playing nations have heightened safety concerns regarding the World Cup, which features 48 one-day international matches in 46 days starting with tournament hosts England against South Africa on Thursday.
In March, 51 worshippers were shot dead in mosque attacks in the New Zealand city of Christchurch while more than 250 people died in Sri Lanka as a result of suicide bombings on Easter Sunday.
"When those incidents happened so close to the tournament, quite understandably that did cause some nervousness," Jill McCracken, the World Cup safety and security director, told reporters at the Oval on Monday.
Public events in Britain have not been immune from terror incidents in recent years, with 23 people killed in a suicide bomb attack after a concert by the American singer Ariana Grande in Manchester two years ago.
McCracken, explaining the security position regarding the World Cup, added: "The UK national threat level sits at severe , which means an attack is likely. "But we also work with security services to assess the impact of the tournament itself and they have come to us with a bespoke threat for the event which is moderate – the second lowest on the scale of risk.
"The threat in the UK is always around crowded places, they look for mass casualties, but when you look at the security measures that we have around the venues, around the teams, and the background work we do, that actually reduces threat."
