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Wankhede Stadium Mumbai.


The Wankhede Stadium, seen here during England's tour to India in 2006, is to be the venue for the 2011 World Cup Final

The Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai has been announced as the venue for the 2011 ICC World Cup final, which is due to be co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

With a new revised format for the competition due to take place at the 2011 edition due to criticism of the last instalment in West Indies in 2007, the Indian board has announced a total of eight venues for the 29 games is it staging.

Mohali will host one of the semi-finals while Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Nagpur will also provides venues for the competitions.

Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, which has not hosted an ODI for the past three years, will also be a venue for four of the games.

Co-hosts Sri Lanka are due to stage 12 games while Bangladesh will be the venue for eight matches as well as the opening ceremony in Dhaka on February 18, 2011.

The revised format sees two groups of seven teams compete to go forward to a quarter-final knock out stage. Each group will both see 21 matches, and the top four teams in each group will progress to the quarter-finals.

The overall structure for the tournament will see the number of games reduced from 51 to 49, with the full itinerary due to be announced in Mumbai on November 9.

A 12-year-old has scored 439 runs in a school cricket tournament in Mumbai that was used as a launch pad for the career of current Indian superstar Sachin Tendulkar, local media reported on Thursday.

Sarfaraz Khan faced 421 balls and hit 12 sixes and 56 boundaries for his Springfield Rizvi school against a hapless Indian Education Society in a three-day Harris Shield match on Wednesday, the Times of India reported.

It was in this tournament in 1988 when Tendulkar, then a prodigal 15-year-old, made 329 during a 664-run partnership with childhood friend Vinod Kambli, who also went on to play international cricket.

Tendulkar made his Test debut a year later and became the most successful batsman in history with a world record 12,773 runs and 42 tons in Tests and 16,993 runs and 44 centuries in one-dayers.

As television cameras and reporters surrounded the young Khan after his mammoth knock, he joked that it was easier scoring 400 than posing for the media.

"I swear I will never hit another 400 in my life," the newspaper quoted Khan as saying. "Slogging on the field is way easier than posing."

The only time Khan took his eye off the ball was when his coach Raju Pathak signalled from the pavilion on the next target he needed to achieve, the paper said.

"I am a complete target person," said a confident Khan. "You tell me you want this and I'll give it to you.

"Once I touched my triple century, word came in about Sachin Tendulkar's mark of 358. That conquered, I managed 400. I was thrilled to bits."

Khan said the only time he had seen Tendulkar from up close was during the Indian Premier League last year when the master was giving batting tips to Mohammad Ashraful, a former captain of Bangladesh.

"I heard him tell Ashraful to watch the ball until the last moment before it left the bowler's hand, so that he gets more time to adjust his shot," said Khan.

"I have followed that advice and it has got me a lot of runs."