MUMBAI: It's not just the Indian team that cricket-crazy fans are craving to watch in the ICC 2023 ODI World Cup in India in October-November.
In what must be a pleasant surprise to the BCCI and the International Cricket Council, tickets for the non-India games, which were made available on the 2023 ODI World Cup's official ticketing platform BookMyShow from 8pm onwards on August 25, are selling incredibly fast. The surge in sale is remarkable, considering the delay in ticket sales due to the rescheduling of nine matches.
It's clear that apart from India, one team whose most matches are going to witness a sellout in the World Cup is Pakistan, who are playing in India for the first time since the 2016 T20 World Cup. At the time of writing this, tickets for four of their games - two each in Kolkata and Bangalore - have been sold out already.
Tickets for all the seven non-India games at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai and the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru have already been sold out. In case of Kolkata, tickets for two out of three games - the Pakistan versus Bangladesh match on October 31, and Pakistan versus England match on November 11, have been sold out already.
The lowest price for a ticket was Rs 800. Only the tickets for The Netherlands versus Bangladesh match are still available in Kolkata. In Dharamsala, which is staging four non-India games at the HPCA Stadium, tickets for the Australia versus New Zealand clash on October 28 have been sold out (lowest ticket price Rs 1,000).
"The tickets for the three non-India games at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai - England vs South Africa on October 21, South Africa vs Bangladesh on October 24 and Australia versus Afghanistan on November 7 - were sold out in just 15 minutes," said a source in the BCCI.
The tickets for the nine India league games go on sale in a phase-wise manner from 8pm on September 1, and it's anybody's guess how many minutes it takes before they are sold out!
Tickets for India's first three matches, at Chennai, Delhi and Pune will be available from 8pm on August 31. Tickets for India's next three matches at Dharamsala, Lucknow and Mumbai will go on sale from 8 pm from September 1.
Thereafter, tickets for India's matches at Bangalore and Kolkata will go on sale from September 2. Tickets for the India-Pakistan clash at Ahmedabad will be available from 8pm on September 3. Tickets for the semifinals and the final will be available from 8pm onwards on September 15.
