would retire as an umpire following the conclusion of the tournament. Umpires Australia Bruce Oxenford Paul Reiffel Rod Tucker Paul Wilson India Sundaram Ravi England Michael Gough Ian Gould Richard Illingworth Richard Kettleborough Nigel Llong New Zealand Chris Gaffaney Pakistan Aleem Dar South Africa Marais Erasmus Sri Lanka Kumar Dharmasena Ruchira Palliyaguruge West Indies Joel Wilson Referees The ICC also named six match referees for the tournament. David Boon Chris Broad Jeff Crowe Ranjan Madugalle Andy Pycroft Richie Richardson Prize money The International Cricket Council declared a total prize money pool of US$10 million for the tournament, the same as the 2015 edition. The prize money was allocated according to the performance of the team as follows: Warm-up matches Before the World Cup, the participating nations competed in 10 warm-up matches, which were played from 24 to 28 May 2019. These matches did not have either One Day International (ODI) status or List A status as teams were allowed to field all 15 members of their squad. Opening ceremony The opening ceremony took place on The Mall in central London during the evening of 29 May 2019, a day before the start of the World Cup. Andrew Flintoff, Paddy McGuinness and Shibani Dandekar hosted the event. Prior to the opening ceremony, the 10 captains met at Buckingham Palace where they were greeted by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Harry. A 60-second challenge took place among the 10 participating 'teams', with each side represented by two guest figures, including Viv Richards, Anil Kumble, Mahela Jayawardene, Jacques Kallis, Brett Lee, Kevin Pietersen, Farhan Akhtar, Malala Yousafzai, Yohan Blake, Damayanthi Dharsha, Azhar Ali, Abdur Razzak, James Franklin and Steven Pienaar, while David Boon was the umpire for the game. England won the game by scoring 74 points, and Australia came second with 69 points. Michael Clarke, who captained Australia to the title in 2015, took the World Cup trophy to the stage, accompanied by former England spin bowler Graeme Swann. The ceremony concluded with the official World Cup song, "Stand By", performed by Loryn and Rudimental. Group stage The initial stage of the tournament saw the 10 teams grouped together for a single round-robin, in which each team played the other nine once for a total of 45 matches. Teams earned two points for a win and one for a tie or no-result (a minimum of 20 overs per side was needed to