Trent Bridge added to venues

10 April 2008

Trent Bridge will be a venue for the ICC World Twenty20

The England and Wales Cricket Board has informed the International Cricket Council that Trent Bridge will join Lord’s and The Brit Oval as a venue for the ICC World Twenty20 to be held in June 2009.

The ICC approved Lord’s and The Oval as venues at their board meeting in Dubai in March. At the same meeting the ICC approved all the other grounds bidding to be a venue for the tournament.

At their meeting on April 2 the ECB’s Major Match Group, chaired by Lord Morris of Handsworth, considered the outstanding bids from a number of venues to be a part of the much anticipated ICC World Twenty20 in 2009.

After measuring all the bids against their balanced scorecard, MMG recommended that Trent Bridge be appointed by the ECB board, who met at Lord’s on Wednesday.

Steve Elworthy, tournament director of ICC World Twenty20 2009, said: “I know that there were some extremely competitive bids from all grounds who wanted to be a part of this exciting event.

“I am delighted that Trent Bridge joins Lord’s and The Oval as a venue. It gives the tournament a good geographical spread without being logistically challenging for the players and officials

“We now know that Lord’s will host the opening game and the final while both Trent Bridge and The Oval will stage the semi final days, which will include both the men’s and women’s semi-finals.”

Steve Elworthy welcomed the move to include Trent Bridge

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Nottinghamshire chief executive Derek Brewer added: “We are absolutely delighted. It’s a fantastic opportunity for us to showcase English cricket to the rest of the world and is brilliant news for the whole of the city, county and region.

“As a club, we are very grateful for the support we received from public and private sector partners in making the bid and we would not have been successful without the extensive development work that has taken place at Trent Bridge this winter.

“That work has only been possible because of the support of East Midlands Development Agency, Nottingham City Council, Notts County Council and Rushcliffe Borough Council, and I’m sure our partners share our pleasure at the news.

“The economic benefits to the region will be incredible and we are delighted that our partners will see such an early pay-back for the faith they showed when investing in our ground developments.

“It’s a measure of the popularity of the competition that one billion people watched the final of the World Twenty20 in South Africa last year.

"It’s a truly global event and we confidently expect that the semi-final from Trent Bridge will be played before an audience of 500 million people around the world.”