NEW YORK CITY – ICC Men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup or­gan­is­ers an­nounced on Tues­day that glam­our team In­dia and Asian ri­vals Bangladesh will fea­ture in an of­fi­cial warm-up match on June 1 to in­au­gu­rate the mod­u­lar Nas­sau Coun­ty In­ter­na­tion­al Crick­et Sta­di­um (NCI­CS) in the Unit­ed States.

The list of of­fi­cial warm-up match­es for the World Cup were an­nounced last week, and or­gan­is­ers said on­ly tour­na­ment venues in Trinidad and the Unit­ed States were go­ing to be used, but they had not al­lo­cat­ed any match­es to the NCI­CS, which has been pur­pose-built for the tour­na­ment.

The match will be the on­ly warm-up con­test at the venue, and for the In­di­ans and Bangladeshis, and takes place on the same day that tour­na­ment is sched­uled to open at the Grand Prairie Sta­di­um, an­oth­er Amer­i­can tour­na­ment venue, in the city of Dal­las in the state of Texas.

“We’re pleased to be able to open this warm-up match to the pub­lic, and es­pe­cial­ly glad to be able to pro­vide an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal res­i­dents to see first-hand what’s hap­pen­ing in their back yard,” T20 USA chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Brett Jones said.

“Im­por­tant­ly, tick­ets or hos­pi­tal­i­ty, or both, re­main avail­able for every match at the NCI­CS, and we’d en­cour­age fans to get them while they can to en­sure we have a full venue while host­ing these in­cred­i­ble ath­letes from all over the world.”

The of­fi­cial warm-up match­es will be 20 overs-a-side, but they will not car­ry T20 In­ter­na­tion­al sta­tus be­cause teams will be al­lowed to field all mem­bers of their 15-mem­ber squads.

In a change from the pre­vi­ous rights cy­cle, teams have the op­tion of play­ing up to two warm-up match­es de­pend­ing on ar­rival time for the event.

CMC