The 2015 Cricket World Cup will be the 11th Cricket World Cup, scheduled to be jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand from 14 February to 29 March 2015.
14 teams will play 49 matches in 14 venues, with Australia staging 26 games at grounds in Adelaide, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney while New Zealand hosts 23 games in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin, Hamilton, Napier, Nelson and Wellington.
The final match of the tournament will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
India are the defending champions, having won the tournament in 2011 when it was held in the Indian subcontinent, defeating Sri Lanka in the finals by 6 wickets.
As well as the 10 ICC full member countries there is also space for 4 associate / affiliate members, so after a series of matches the places went to Ireland, Scotland, Afghanistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
England have never won the World Cup although they have been beaten in the final 3 times (’79, ’87, ’92).
Last tournament they did qualify for the knockout stage, despite being beaten by Bangladesh, and more famously by Ireland, but were beaten in the quarter finals by Sri Lanka on home soil.
This will be both Scotland and Ireland’s third times competing in the tournament. Scotland have yet to make it make it out of the groups, but Ireland famously made it to the last 8 (seeing of test nations Pakistan and Zimbabwe in the process) in the 2007 tournament.
All the teams are currently over there, and in the latest round of warm up matches Scotland thrashed Ireland whilst England convincingly beat the West Indies.
As you might imagine 4 time Champions Australia appear to be the bookies favourites, closely follow by South Africa.
And knowing how passionately the Aussie fans love their sport, you can be assured they will be roared on by full houses every match, although interestingly enough tickets for the Pool B match between India and Pakistan scheduled on 15 February 2015, were sold out within 12 minutes of being on sale.
For more information please see the ICC World Cup website.