The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup will be the tenth Cricket World Cup and will be hosted by three South Asian Test cricket playing countries: India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It will be Bangladesh's first time co-hosting a Cricket World Cup. The World Cup will use cricket's One Day International format, with fourteen national cricket teams scheduled to compete. The World Cup will take place during February and March 2011, with the first match to be played on 19 February 2011 with co-hosts India and Bangladesh facing off at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur.

The World Cup was also to be co-hosted by Pakistan, but in the wake of the 2009 attack on the Sri Lanka national cricket team in Lahore, the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab, the International Cricket Council (ICC) were forced to strip Pakistan of its hosting rights. The headquarters of the organising committee were originally situated in Lahore, but have now been shifted to Mumbai. Pakistan was supposed to hold 14 matches, including one semi-final. Eight of Pakistan's matches have been awarded to India, four to Sri Lanka and two to Bangladesh.

The ICC originally announced its decision on which countries would host the 2011 World Cup on 30 April 2006. Australia and New Zealand also bid for the tournament, and a successful Australasian bid for the 2011 World Cup would have seen a 50-50 split in games, with the final still up for negotiation. The Trans–Tasman bid, Beyond Boundaries, was the only bid for 2011 delivered to ICC headquarters in Dubai ahead of the 1 March deadline. Considerable merits of the Australasian bid were the superior venues and infrastructure and the total support of both the New Zealand and Australian governments on tax and customs issues during the tournament, according to Cricket Australia chief executive James Sutherland. The New Zealand government had also given assurance that Zimbabwe would be allowed to compete in the tournament, following political discussions in the country whether their cricket team should be allowed to tour Zimbabwe in 2005. The Australian bid also won the support of former West Indies captain Shivnarine Chanderpaul.

ICC President Ehsan Mani said the extra time taken by the Asian block to hand over its bid compliance book had harmed the four-nation bid. However, when the time came to vote, Asia won the hosting rights by seven votes to three. The Pakistan Cricket Board has revealed that it was the vote of the West Indies Cricket Board that swung the matter, as the Asian bid had the support of the four bidding countries along with South Africa and Zimbabwe. It was reported in Pakistani newspaper Dawn that the Asian countries promised to hold fund-raising events for West Indian cricket during the 2007 World Cup, which may have influenced the vote. However, chairman of the Monitoring Committee of the Asian bid, I. S. Bindra, said it was their promise of extra profits in the region of US$ 400 million that swung the vote, that there "was no quid pro quo for their support", and that playing the West Indies had "nothing to do with the World Cup bid".

ICC prefers to rotate World Cup venues between major cricket playing nations. The world cups have been hosted by England (Three times 1975,79,83) India/Pakistan 1987, Australia/New Zealand 1992, India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka 1996, England (UK,Netherlands) 1999, South Africa (Zimbabwe,Kenya) 2003, West Indies 2007. For the 2011 World Cup Australia/New Zealand were a strong contender ahead of India/Pakistan/Sri Lanka/Bangladesh because they had not hosted a World cup since 1992. In the final voting India won because they argued that since they were a bigger group of countries they should be assigned a World cup more frequently. Due to this, Australia/New Zealand were awarded the 2015 World Cup.

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