Venues announced for 2005 ICC Trophy

© ICC

The International Cricket Council and the Irish Cricket Union today announced the venues for the ICC Trophy Ireland 2005, the tournament which will determine the final five qualifying places for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007.

The eighth ICC Trophy will bring together 12 teams to contest 42 matches at 25 venues - a record for an ICC event - in the first half of July. The venues, which are still subject to final ICC inspection, are spread out across the north and south of Ireland with the group phase scheduled to take place in the north and the finals in the south. Clontarf, the ground at which Ireland defeated Surrey by five wickets in this year's Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy, will host the final.

Ehsan Mani, the ICC's president, said the tournament was fortunate to have so many highly rated grounds available throughout Ireland. "The ICC is delighted that the games will be played at such a variety of venues as it means that no ground will be played on too frequently and that will augur well for the state of the pitches," said Mani. "It is obviously a hugely important aspect of the tournament, not least because five of the 12 countries will qualify for the ICC Cricket World Cup in the West Indies in 2007."

John Wright, secretary of the Irish Cricket Union who will also be the tournament director, said: "We are very grateful for the enthusiastic manner in which clubs throughout the country responded to the invitation to host games. In fact we received more acceptances than were required so, inevitably, some clubs will be disappointed. However, such is the enthusiasm for the tournament that some of these clubs have offered their facilities for `warm-up' games."

Ireland will play their five first phase matches at Bangor, North Down, Waringstown and Civil Service which will stage two matches.

The full list of venues is as follows:

Armagh, Bangor, Carrick, Civil Service, Cliftonville, Clontarf, Cooke Collegians, Downpatrick, Drummond, Eglinton, Instonians, Leinster, Limavady, Lisburn, Lurgan, Malahide, Merrion, Muckamore, Newforge, North County, North Down, RBAI (Osborne Park, Belfast), The Hills, Waringstown, Woodvale.

Details on ticketing and hospitality arrangements will be made available in early 2005.

Eleven of the participating nations in the ICC Trophy 2005 are now known and the groups have been drawn. The final team will be the winner of ICC World Cup Qualifying Series (WCQS) event in Malaysia in February.

Group A
Bermuda, Denmark, Ireland, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States.

Group B
Canada, Holland, Namibia, Oman, Scotland, WCQS winner.

Previous winners
1979 - Sri Lanka
1982 - Zimbabwe
1986 - Zimbabwe
1990 - Zimbabwe
1994 - UAE
1997 - Bangladesh
2001 - Holland