Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to inaugurate the grand gala cricketing show, the most prestigious one-day tournament after the World Cup, at 1:30 pm on Saturday.
Immediately after the inauguration, Alistair Campbell and Stephen Fleming will go to wicket for the toss as Zimbabwe will play the lone pre-quarterfinal with New Zealand in the inaugural match of the tournament.
All the eight matches will be day and night affairs under newly installed floodlights. The matches will start at 2 pm and conclude at 9.45 pm with a break of 45 minutes from 5.30 pm.
Nearly 40,000 crowd capacity Bangabandu National Stadium in Dhaka, the venue of biggest sports carnival of the country, is wearing a new look with beautiful decoration and its adjoining areas are in festive mood.
Several hundred artists, designers and workers were engaged to work round the clock to give the final touch to the Stadium, which will be the main attraction of millions of cricket lovers and TV viewers at home and abroad.
The ``trophy'' of the Wills Cup Cricket, which reached the capital on Wednesday, will be officially unveiled and handed over to Bangladesh Cricket Board by International Cricket Council on Friday afternoon at Bangabandhu Stadium.
Tight security measures have already been enforced in capital Dhaka when the country is going through a political turmoil as the verdict of a case filed in connection with assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is due on November 8. The national stadium is also name after country's founding father Bangabandhu Mujib.
Tickets of most of the games have almost finished with mad rush of thousands of cricket fans to branches of the bank assigned to sell tickets. Many alleged that tickets are now being sold in black markets.
Nine elite of the world cricket - Sri Lanka, Australia, India, Pakistan, England, South Africa, West Indies, New Zealand and Zimbabwe - will compete in the fund raising competition till November 1.
Of them, world champions Sri Lanka led by its long serving captain Arjuna Ranatunga and formidable South Africa, led by Hansie Cronje, arrived in Dhaka Thursday.
England, Zimbabwe and New Zealand are already in the capital to participate in the gala event.
Two former world champions, India and West Indies, will reach Dhaka on October 25 along with a six-member partial squad of Australia.
Another world champions, Pakistan will be the last team to reach Dhaka on October 27 with the remaining Australian players.
Two popular TV commentators - Michael Holding of West Indies and RaviShastri of India - arrived in the city Thursday morning while Tony Greig was due to the reach city in the night. Eight international umpires and match referees are already in the capital to conduct the eight matches of the tourney.
Millions of TV viewers around the world will watch eight matches live and modern entertaining display on the newly installed electronics scoreboard, to be telecast with 18 cameras of American based TV network WorldTel on behalf of Dooradarshan.