India to play South Africa in World Cup 2019 opener

Two-time champions India will be playing their opening game of the 2019 World Cup against South Africa. The game is scheduled to be held on June 5th. The complete schedule of the tournament will be announced on the 30th of this month.

The ICC Meeting was held in Kolkata, where the fixture draws were made. The tournament is slated to begin on May 30, 2019, and will extend until July 14th.

With the IPL ending around May 19, that will leave only two weeks for the teams to prepare for the World Cup.

"This is the first time Indo-Pak match won't be a starting affair. Since the format will be a round robin affair (all teams playing each other like 1992)," the official added.

The India-Pakistan game will be held on June 16 in Manchester. India has never lost to Pakistan in a 50-over World Cup game.

There were a few other changes made to Team India's upcoming cycle: "As we had decided, India will play a maximum 309 days of international cricket in this cycle across formats, a reduction of 92 days from the earlier cycle".

Having won the World Cup twice (1983 and 2011), Team India, set to be led by Virat Kohli, is being touted as one of the favourites to win the tournament again. Former India opener Virender Sehwag had recently said that the current team has the capability of winning matches overseas as well, and is one of the favourites a year into the tournament.

"This team has capability to win the Test series outside India with the kind of bowling and batting we have. We just missed to win the Test series in South Africa or else we could have created history." he had said.