World cup 2011 schedule | World cup schedule

India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka expect tourism to surge as visitors from all over the world will visit these nations to experience the thrill. Matches will take place in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Kolkata, Mohali, Mumbai, Nagpur, New Delhi (all India), Colombo, Hambantota, Kandy (all Sri Lanka), Chittagong and Dhaka (both Bangladesh). The schedule of the matches is a suitable one and shall provide sufficient amount of time for sightseeing to visitors. Spectators would like to explore various each of these beautiful countries. On the day a stallion called Cape Cross met a mare named Urban Sea for an assignation in a breeding shed a spark flew across the animal world. The outcome of this loveless union was a horse to make racing swoon. Sea The Stars, after his captivating victory in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, is entitled to be lauded as the greatest three-year-old to grace the turf.He may be the greatest Flat racehorse, full-stop. There was no queue of dissenters to fight that claim in the Bois de Boulogne after this Irish-trained phenomenon had registered his sixth Group One win in as many months with a two-length win over Youmzain, the eternal Arc bridesmaid, with Cavalryman a head back in third. Instead a normally reserved Parisian crowd stampeded to the winner's enclosure as if this were the more boisterous Cheltenham Festival.
Irish, British, French: this was a unifying triumph for the hordes who chase winners at betting windows and the smaller numbers who dream of miracles in the equine boudoir.Modern sport is a world of institutionalized over-statement, so the non-aficionado may suspect an attack of giddiness in the suggestion that no finer thoroughbred has looked through a bridle. It may reassure them to know that horses have raced round Longchamp since Napoleon III inaugurated this lush track in 1857. This was the 88th Arc. The praise that swells around Sea The Stars is backed up by memory and perspective.Certainly his three-year-old campaign breaks new ground. He is the first to complete the 2,000 Guineas-Derby-Arc treble and has destroyed the rest of the Classic generation – as well as Europe's best older horses – at eight, 10 and 12 furlongs or a mile to a mile-and-half. Each month since May the yellow silks of Christopher Tsui have flashed past the post in front in a Group One race. To expect a horse to excel from May to October usually involves a losing duel with reality but Sea The Stars has grown stronger, fitter, better, like a creature from myth and legend.Longchamp translates as "long field" and Sea The Stars has galloped across the seasons with nature-defying power. In the "grand finale", as the French call it, Mick Kinane's mount even created a few of his own obstacles to overcome. First he over-heated, not emotionally but in his skin, the sweat from which whipped up a lather between his legs. Then he pulled too hard in the early phases of the race and was in an unpromising position when Kinane had to pull him out to deliver his challenge two off the rail. To complete the set he quickened so dramatically that he struck the front too early.For a moment he cut a lonely figure, vulnerable to attack, as the beaten generation gave chase. But he was too good to "stop" in front. Eighteen lesser beasts were pulverized as Kinane pushed his way to a victory he later described as the horse's "easiest win".From the extended sprint of the Guineas to Epsom's funfair undulations, the sharp mile-and-a-quarter tests of summer and now the equine périphérique of the Arc, Sea The Stars has passed all the tests, not through grinding strength but with a sweeping majesty which, the sharp downturn in bloodstock markets permitting, renders him the world's most valuable thoroughbred. First he took out his contemporaries, then he cut down his seniors.Nor should it be forgotten that he is a horse of regal agility, poise and equanimity under pressure. He is by Europe's leading stallion out of an Arc-winning mare and is the perfect physical representation of what breeders want a champion to be. He has made a 50-year-old jockey look 21 and a 27-year-old owner appear about 16. His trainer, John Oxx, has coaxed him through six months of productive endeavor without giving him a break, which is the norm for Derby winners who go on to contest the Arc.The last horse to complete the 2,000 Guineas-Derby double was Nashwan 20 years ago. Trained from a wheelchair by the august "Major" Dick Hern, Nashwan also won the Eclipse and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes (a lesser, mid-summer Arc). But he was a busted flush by autumn. In Arc history Sea-Bird and Ribot (who won it twice) are the immortals, pre-Dancing Brave (the dashing 1986 winner), but the breadth and depth of Sea The Stars' record outshines even those great champions from the 1945 to 1970 era.The best comparison is with Mill Reef, who won the 1971 Derby, Eclipse, King George and Arc. What gives Sea The Stars the edge, though, is that he also won Newmarket's 2,000 Guineas, the first colts' classic, in which Mill Reef was beaten by Brigadier Gerard.A peculiarity of racing these days is that its popularity is slipping at a time when Kauto Star deserves a place in the same paragraph as Desert Orchid over jumps and Sea The Stars is imperious on the Flat. The pity of yesterday's demolition is that few outside the cognoscenti will have tuned in to see it. From this conquest arises a terrible dilemma for Oxx and the Tsui family: should they bank their chips or stretch this horse's efforts to another continent, another month, another surface? Next month's Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita could establish Sea The Stars as the greatest horse of all time or leave him flailing in the dirt with an imperfection on a previously pristine record."We'll have to see how he is and we'll have a long talk with John," Tsui said. It is possible to pity them for having this decision to make. There was a perfection, a symmetry about this Arc win that should not be violated by non-combatants telling Oxx and Tsui they ducked a challenge if they decline to go to California.