Google is celebrating the beginning of the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Cup 2023, which is set to kick off at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad at 2 pm on Thursday, with an animated doodle.

The animated doodle shows two ducks running between the wickets with audience present in the background. Users will be redirected to the full schedule of the whole tournament upon clicking on the doodle on the Google homepage.

With cricket being arguably the most popular sport in India, the World Cup 2023, which will be hosted in the sub-continent, is set to witness unprecedented fanfare. The 13^th edition of the Cricket World Cup, which started in the year 1975, will begin today at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad with England taking on New Zealand, both finalists of the last tournament.

The group stage of the tournament will see a total of 45 matches played with each team facing the others once. Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka are the teams participating in the showpiece event. Out of the 10 teams in the group stage, only four will proceed into the knockout stages which will see two semi-final matches and the final in Ahmedabad.

Security measures have been heightened across the different host cities including Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, Dharamsala and Pune. The Narendra Modi Stadium in Motera, along with other parts of Ahmedabad, will have around 3,500 police personnel deployed for the opening match.

The Joint Commissioner of Police, Sector 1, Chirag Koradia on Wednesday said, “As many as 16 IPS officers will be on the field to supervise our security set-up on Thursday during the cricket match. The same security arrangement, consisting of different layers, will be also implemented in subsequent matches to be played at the Narendra Modi stadium as part of the World Cup.”

Ahead of the first match, the traffic police in Ahmedabad issued a notification prohibiting the movement of vehicles on roads leading to the stadium from the BRTS junction from 11 am till midnight.