Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott speaks to children as retired Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar (L) signs autograph at Cricket Club of India in Mumbai September 4, 2014.
Australia's Prime Minister Tony Abbott speaks to children as retired Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar (L) signs autograph at Cricket Club of India in Mumbai September 4, 2014. REUTERS/Danish Siddiqui

The ICC Cricket World Cup is the third largest sporting event in the world. Behind only the Summer Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, the 2015 edition will be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand from Feb. 15 to Mar. 29. Cricketing legend Sachin Tendulkar has been appointed the ambassador for the event, incidentally he was also the ambassador in the previous edition held in 2011.

Sachin Tendulkar retired from cricket shortly after being a part of the last ICC World Cup winning team. He is the holder of numerous records like being the highest run scorer in both the One Day Internationals and Test Match cricket. He has also scored the most number of centuries in the two mentioned formats of cricket as well. He was a ball boy in the 1987 edition of the competition and has participated in the next six ICC World Cup tournaments and is the highest scorer in the ICC World Cup history as well.

The tournament will be initially played in a round-robin format featuring 14 teams divided into two groups. Along with the regular ten Test Match playing nations there will be four associate teams featuring in the competition. They are Afghanistan, Scotland, Ireland and The United Arab Emirates. At the end of the league phase the top four teams from the two groups will get into the knockout phase of the competition and play the quarter-finals, semi-finals and the finals. There will be 49 matches played in total. The final will be played at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Australian cricket team are the most successful team in the history of the competition winning it on four occasions, 1987 in India and Pakistan, 1999 in England, 2003 in South Africa and 2007 in the West Indies. The last time the World Cup was hosted by Australia was in 1992. That tournament was won by Pakistan under the inspirational leadership of Imran Khan. New Zealand will play Sri Lanka in the first match of the tournament on Feb. 14 at Christchurch and Australia will take on England at Melbourne later that very day.

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