THE TOSS
The coins used for the toss will be 1oz pure gold supplied by the Chamber of Mines. There will be a separate coin for each game, 54 in all. The face of President Thabo Mbeki to appear on one side of the coin, with the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 logo, the names of the two competing teams, the date and venue of the match on the other side.

TOURNAMENT FORMAT
The tournament will run for 44 days from the Opening Ceremony in Cape Town on Saturday, February 8, to the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 Final in Johannesburg on Sunday, March 23. There will be a total of 54 cricket matches - a record for the ICC Cricket World Cup.
All games will be day games, except in Cape Town and Durban where all games (five at each venue) will be day-night games, the only two centres where day-night games are scheduled.
The 14 teams (see Pools) will play each other in the preliminary or pool section on a round robin basis. There will be 42 matches of these matches played over a period of 24 days.
The top three teams from each pool will proceed to the next stage of the tournament, known as the Super Six, carrying with them the points scored in matches against the other qualifying teams in their pool. The Super Six will be played over a period of nine days during which there will be two days on which no matches will be played and two days on which there will be two matches per day. In the latter case, one match will be a day game and the other a day-night game.
The Super Six will determine the four teams that will contest the semifinals - a day game in Port Elizabeth on Tuesday, March 18, and a day-night game in Durban on Thursday, March 20. In the semifinals, Team 1 plays Team 4 and Team 2 plays Team 3.
Games in South Africa will be staged in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Centurion, Bloemfontein, Paarl, Potchefstroom, East London, Benoni, Kimberley and Pietermaritzburg. Games in Zimbabwe will be staged at Harare and Bulawayo, three games each. The two games in Kenya will be staged at Nairobi.

ICC SCRAPS RESERVE DAYS FOR POOL MATCHES
The International Cricket Council and the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 Organising Committee has announced that there will be no reserve days for rain affected matches in the preliminary round of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003.

The decision by the ICC’s Executive Board was taken for the logistical necessities of completing the tournament.

ICC Chief Executive, Malcolm Speed, said that the decision would ensure that the first stage of the tournament will be completed without disruption.

“The ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 is a significant logistical challenge. The tournament is taking place in three countries, at 15 venues over 43 days. For this to be managed effectively, the schedule needs a degree of certainty in the first round,” said Mr Speed.

ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 Executive Director, Dr Ali Bacher, said that the reason to scrap the rain days in the preliminary round was based entirely on logistical necessities.

“Everything, including hotel accommodation, air-travel and satellite television time, would have had to be double booked to accommodate these reserve days,” said Dr Bacher.

“Logistically for the teams, their supporters, the local and overseas media and the organisers this created several potential risks to the tight schedule and had the potential to disrupt the remainder of the tournament.

“In the end, there was little option but to move away from the reserve days for the first round.”

Reserve days will still apply to matches from the Super 6 stage of the tournament from 7 March 2003 onwards where a reserve day has been set aside for all Super 6 matches and the semifinals on March 18 and 20.

For the CWC Final at the Wanderers in Johannesburg on March 23, two reserve days have been set aside.

For the preliminary round matches, to be played between 9 February and 4 March 2003, points will be shared if no result is possible on the day of the match.

The Duckworth-Lewis system of recalculating target scores in rain affected matches will be used in all matches at ICC CWC 2003. .