Proteas will kick off their quest for World Cup glory in the north of India

As was the case in 2011, the last time the men’s Cricket World Cup was hosted in India, SA will play their opening match of the tournament in the Indian capital New Delhi, most likely against Sri Lanka.         

Temba Bavuma’s team will play their round-robin matches at eight of the 10 host venues over the course of five weeks. Should Sri Lanka progress from the ICC qualifying tournament taking place in Zimbabwe, they will face SA at the Arun Jaitley stadium on October 7.

The ICC explained on Tuesday that Sri Lanka will earn the Qualifier 2 berth regardless of where they finish in the qualifying tournament. The 1996 champions have already secured their spot in the Super Six phase of that competition and remain strong favourites to win the tournament. 

The Cricket World Cup’s opening game will be played two days earlier between the two finalists from the 2019 event, champions England and New Zealand, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. That venue will also host the final on November 19.

The Proteas have a relatively friendly travel schedule to start with, as their opening three fixtures are all in the northern part of India. After Delhi they head an hour’s flight southeast to Lucknow for a match against Australia on October 13. Four days later they will face a Qualifier 1 team — at this stage it looks like Zimbabwe — in the picturesque city of Dharamsala on the border of the Himalayas. 

They will then spend a week in Mumbai, playing England on October 21 and Bangladesh three days later at the Wankhede Stadium, which hosted the last World Cup final in India in 2011.

Their travelling gets tricky after that, not just in terms of where they go but the short turnaround time between matches and the quality of opposition they will face too. Over the course of 10 days, they will bounce from Chennai in the south, where they face Pakistan, to Pune in the west to play New Zealand, wrapping up that sequence in Kolkata in the east against India. 

Cricket SA had expressed concern with the ICC about the Proteas’ travel schedule. But in terms of precedent, this year’s schedule is only a little tougher than was the case in 2011, when they played three matches in a week, travelling from Chandigarh in the north to Chennai and finishing off in Kolkata, with a stop in the central city of Nagpur in between. 

Certain to factor into the preparations is the weather. In the north of India, temperatures at that time of the year are relatively cool, about 20°C, while in the south it’s warmer, in the high 20s, though not as oppressive as some of the players who feature in the Indian Premier League will have encountered. 

In addition, the Proteas will exclusively play day/night matches and dew is likely to be a significant factor that will require careful planning from head coach Rob Walter and his management team. 

The schedule, unveiled in Mumbai on Tuesday, 100 days before the tournament starts, had been delayed for several months due to internal squabbling at the Indian governing body BCCI over which state associations would host the most lucrative matches — mostly those featuring hosts India. The other contentious issue is India’s relationship with Pakistan, with the Pakistan Cricket Board’s stance remaining that it is awaiting approval from that country’s government before Babar Azama’s team will be allowed to head to the World Cup. 

India and Pakistan are scheduled to face each other in Ahmedabad on October 15, a match that could post a world record crowd of 130,000 in attendance.