Wonderful job by Org Comm

Chris DHAMBARAGE reporting from India

As the Tenth Edition of the ICC World Cup draws to a close Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) and the Cricket World Cup (CWC) organizing Committee could look back with a great amount of satisfaction having successfully conducted a tournament of high calibre.

The tournament turned out to be a huge success with a capacity crowd in almost every match played in Colombo, Hambantota and Pallekele. In fact the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Stadium in Sooriyawewa hosted the two opening matches of the tournament.

In addition the Pallekele International Stadium in Kandy hosted three matches and the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo had the privilege of hosting seven matches including one quarterfinal and a semifinal fixture.

The most significant feature in this tournament was the two new venues which were specially constructed for the ICC World Cup in Hambanthota and in Pallekele during a short period of time. In addition the R Premadasa Stadium also received a huge face lift with a couple of new stands coming up instead of the earlier structure. The three Sri Lankan venues matched the success of each other in staging the matches in all areas from crowd handling, cricket operations, transport for officials, media and public and entertainment.

The vast crowds that patronized the games at these venues also proved that the highly debated reasons for choosing locations outside the capital Colombo to develop two venues for the CWC 2011 were timely. As a result the International Cricket Council (ICC) paid glowing tribute to Sri Lanka Cricket for organizing a tournament of this magnitude while further underlining the passion and the enthusiasm for the game in this part of the World.

No doubt the pressure was on Sri Lanka Cricket from the moment they took over the task as they were running out of time to complete the two new venues due to bad weather in the country.

However Tournament Director of the host nation Suraj Dandeniya along with Chairman Sri Lanka Cricket D Somachandra de Silva never looked back as they continued with their task untiringly that has brought fantastic results at the end.

The CWC Organizing Committee was able to put up new stadiums which are absolutely fantastic state of the art stadiums which could be rated as some of the best in the World. The new venues have now become a pride because everyone can be proud that Sri Lanka also has stadiums that are of World class. It is an amazing fact how Sri Lankan engineers have taken this task and completed three stadiums within one year.