ICC Dismisses World Cup Doubters

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has a firm message for naysayers around the world: The 2007 World Cup will be held in the West Indies.

On the heels of a published report detailing "significant doubts" over the Caribbean's ability to host the World Cup, ICC president Ehsan Mani made it clear the statements out of the Australia media were false.

"I would just like to say very categorically, there's absolutely no truth in this. Over the past few days, I've had an opportunity of talking to Bob Merriman, the president of Cricket Australia and he has emphatically denied the statements attributed to him," Mani declared.

"Next week will see the ICC signing the host country agreement with the West Indies Cricket Board. It is the first step leading up to the 2007 World Cup and would start a journey that we would take together towards the 2007 World Cup," Mani added.

Mani, who was in Barbados for an ICC board meeting, made it clear the ICC was in control of the planning for the game's most popular tournament. "The hosting of the World Cup is in the West Indies, but this is a partnership between the West Indies Cricket Board and the International Cricket Council..."We are going to be involved totally in this process, right from the beginning. If there are going to be problems, we'll pick them up early. There will be regular consultation process, regular meetings," he declared.

"The West Indies are not going to be left on their own to even sink or swim," he assured.

He said the ICC would "minimise" the changes of anything going wrong. "We are going to minimise any chances of anything going wrong. The legacy that we are going to leave behind from this World Cup is going to be enormous for the West Indies in terms of the infrastructure developments here, in terms of the financial resources for the West Indies Cricket Board to sustain the game going forward," Mani added.

The assurances from the ICC comes just days after Australian journalist reported that Australia was informally discussed as a "fall back option" to host the event because of fears that the infrastructure in the Caribbean would not measure up.

But, the ICC president insisted that negatives "will not be allowed to take over."

"At this stage, we have no concerns with the West Indies as we did not have with South Africa at this stage...If it boils off matters outside the control of the ICC or the West Indies Cricket Board or something goes wrong like stadiums are not built or monies not made available, we will pick that up very early on so we are going to try to minimise the effects of this," Mani added.

Separately, the ICC confirmed the 2007 World Cup would be expanded to take in 16 teams, divided into four groups of four.