Million-dollar prize pool for ICC knockout tourney

The winner of next month's ICC knockout tournament in Nairobi will earn more prize money than Australia did for winning the 1999 World Cup.

The victors in the eleven-team, ten-match competition, set down between October 3 and 15, will receive between $US 340,000 and 370,000 in prize money, as part of the $1 million prize pool announced by the ICC yesterday. Australia picked up $300,000 in official prize money after playing eight matches to win last year's World Cup, which also carried a total prize pool of one million dollars and was split among twelve competing teams.

In next month's tournament, the winners will have played either three or four games to win the final and therein lies an anomaly. The 6th to 11th-seeded teams in the tournament will have the opportunity to earn $30,000 more than teams seeded 1 to 5 because of the prize money structure.

As announced yesterday by the ICC, a basic $20,000 will be guaranteed to each team taking part in the competition, with prize money rising dramatically with each win gained. Winners of the qualifying rounds will each receive $30,000 while a further $40,000 will be claimed by teams winning the quarter-finals. Semi-final winners will receive another $50,000 and the winners of the final receive a $250,000 bonus.

Six teams - India, Kenya, Sri Lanka, West Indies, England and Bangladesh - will play in the qualifying round of the knockout competition, with Australia, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand and Zimbabwe receiving byes into the quarter-finals. None of the teams receiving byes will get any payment for not having to play in the qualifying round, and therefore they will only be able to gain a total of $340,000 in prize money for winning the tournament, instead of the $370,000 available to the bottom six.

Seedings for the ICC knockout were based on performances in the 1999 World Cup, so effectively the five best teams of last year have been disadvantaged to the tune of $30,000 before this tournament even gets under way.

The prize money available for the tournament is more than double that on offer for the inaugural event in Bangladesh in October 1998, when winners South Africa took away $140,000. This year's event is the first conducted by the ICC under a seven-year deal with the World Sports Group consortium, who earlier this year paid $550 million for the rights to televise and market the World Cup, ICC knockout, Under-19 World Cup and ICC Trophy tournaments until 2007.