World Cup a way to grow the game, says ECB chief

LONDON: Tom Harrison, the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, sees the ICC World Cup 2019 as a way to grow the game, and professed himself “giddy with excitement” about the tournament.

The World Cup will be played from May 30 to July 14 in England and Wales, with 10 teams participating, and Harrison declared it an “unbelievable opportunity”.

“We’ve got huge plans for making sure the Cricket World Cup is a platform on which we grow the game in England and Wales,” Harrison told BBC Sport in an interview. “It is an unbelievable opportunity for English cricket, it’s up to us to make sure we take advantage of that.

“And for the first time, you sense we have this gilt-edged opportunity to take people from the white-ball game directly into the Ashes series, which immediately follows the World Cup.

“It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity. I’m giddy with excitement about 2019.”

In the run-up to the tournament, the ECB have made efforts to reach out to various communities to take up the game. The tournament provided another chance for the board to “use the power of cricket to connect communities”, Harrison said.

“It’s really important the engagement of the World Cup goes way beyond what happens on a live TV signal,” he added.

“We’ve got 700,000 tickets to sell, we’ve had 2.9 million applications, so there’s no question that there’s a sense something massive is happening to the game in this country. People want to be part of it.”