ICC Intercontinental Cup 2011-13 fixtures and participating teams announced

The International Cricket Council's first-class tournament, the ICC Intercontinental Cup 2011-13 will feature eight teams this edition - Afghanistan, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, Netherlands, Namibia, Scotland and United Arab Emirates (UAE) when the tournament begins next month.

Namibia and UAE were selected by the ICC Development Committee to participate in the event having finished in the top four of the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League Division 2 tournament in April 2011.

The first round of fixtures begins in June with venues and exact dates for all the games to be finalised. The venues and dates of matches will be decided upon by the two participating nations within the window provided by the ICC (as marked in the below table), with all the information to be released in advance of each window.

The tournament is a longer competition than previous editions of the ICC Intercontinental Cup running over a period of 28 months.

The ICC Intercontinental Shield competition that ran alongside the ICC Intercontinental Cup last season, featuring sides from Namibia, UAE, Bermuda and Uganda, has been discontinued after an ICC Development Committee meeting in November 2010 elected to return the ICC Intercontinental Cup back to its 2007-2008 eight-team format.

The ICC Development Committee also resolved, after its recent meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, to commence a 50-over competition between the eight participating countries with two matches to be played alongside the ICC Intercontinental Cup tournament schedule. More information on this will be released in due course

The breakdown of fixtures for the ICC Intercontinental Cup 2011-13 is as follows: