Two strong bids from Asia and Australasia to host the 2011 cricket World Cup will give the sport's governing body much to discuss at a meeting on Sunday, its chief executive Malcolm Speed said on Friday.
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have submitted a late joint bid to challenge the application made jointly by Australia and New Zealand.
The bids, and the hosting of the 2015 World Cup, will be discussed by the International Cricket Council (ICC) board in Dubai, though a decision might not be made immediately, Speed said.
"We put in place some very strict compliance guidelines so a lot of work has gone into both of these submissions," Speed said in a statement.
"This leaves us in a very positive position where we have two strong options for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 and there will doubtless be extensive discussion as to which submission will be successful.
"It may be that neither submission has sufficient support at the end of the meeting in which case the board will have to reconvene at a later date."
The bidders need the support of at least seven of the 10 full members, or test-playing nations, to win.
Australia and New Zealand co-hosted the 1992 World Cup and were in line to stage the 2011 event after Asia (1996), England (1999), South Africa (2003) and the West Indies (2007) were each awarded the tournament.
However, the ICC announced late last year that they were scrapping their rotational policy in favour of event-by-event bidding after the sub-continent countries said they should be awarded every third World Cup because of the money they generated for the game.
SEVEN VOTES
A senior Indian cricket official said on Friday he was confident of Asian success in the vote.
"We need seven votes to win the bid and we have four already," Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) secretary Niranjan Shah told Reuters in Mumbai. "We've a 100 percent chance."
The Australia-New Zealand bid is rated highly but Shah said: "If we don't get seven votes, I don't think the other party will manage that as we are four votes plus."
Any decision made on Sunday will need approval from the ICC annual conference at Lord's in July.
The ICC said the four Asian countries had been granted permission to make a late bid, after the February deadline, subject to several conditions including the acceptance of the Twenty20 world championship as an official part of the ICC events programme.
Participation in the first Twenty20 world championship next year would be voluntary but from 2009 it would be mandatory for full members.
Pakistan and India said earlier this year they did not support a Twenty20 world championship but Pakistan had since softened their stance, a senior Pakistani official said on Friday.
"Pakistan's policy is that if a Twenty20 tournament is organised by the ICC we will participate in it," Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) director of cricket operations, Saleem Altaf told Reuters in Karachi.
If the ICC board did decide on the World Cup hosts on Sunday, it would then consider the venues for other events including the 2007 and 2009 Twenty20 championships, the ICC said.
England, Malaysia, Scotland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates and West Indies have submitted bids.
(Additional reporting by Sanjay Rajan in Mumbai and Waheed Khan in Karachi)