Cricket Canada’s Men’s team left for the 2011 Cricket World Cup Wednesday. The team travels to Dubai for a 10 day training camp and then onto the Cricket World Cup starting in Bangladesh. In Dubai Canada will play warm-up matches against Ireland and Afghanistan before taking on Bangladesh and England in Bangladesh. The tournament gets underway in earnest for the Canadian Team on February 20th against Sri Lanka.

While the team leaves under a sense of optimism of a best ever performance at the world cup, 3 players have not yet been granted visas to enter India. Vice Captain, Rizwan Cheema, Khurram Chohan and Hamza Tariq have not received visas for travel to India.

Cricket Canada this week, had stepped up its efforts to have the visa’s issued before the team left for Dubai. In a letter to ICC President Sharad Pawar, Cricket Canada president Ranjit Saini requested that all efforts be made to have the visas granted immediately.

“We seek your kind help and attention to this matter in assisting our players to obtain their Visa in Dubai, Dhaka or Colombo. We also do hope that ICC have contingency plans to ensure that the matches are played elsewhere if the Visa will not be processed on time or rejected all together”

While the ICC have assured Cricket Canada that the visa’s will be granted, the long delays have left Cricket Canada in an awkward position. Cricket Canada has confirmed that they will not alter team selection to accommodate the pending visa issue.