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Arthur admitted after his team’s seven-wicket loss that with hardly any Pakistan in attendance at the packed Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, the team was affected by the partisan crowd. The absence of Pakistani fans from the stadium was evident, as no fan had obtained visas to travel across the border. Only a few Pakistani journalists were able to arrive in time to cover the match, and a small number of fans of Pakistani origin residing/citizens in other countries.
“Look, I’d be lying if I said that [not affect us]”It didn’t feel like an ICC event, to be quite honest. It felt like a bilateral series. It felt like a BCCI event,” Arthur said after the match.
“Things that we’ll probably take away and try to work on, try to do better…so this event is the only one [at] the beginning. Let’s see how it all goes, and we’ll go away and review what can change, what we can do better, and how we can improve the World Cup and overall cricketing performances.
“We will take it as it comes and get to the end of the event. I am convinced that the World Cup will still be great.”
While the India-Pakistan match was watched by record crowds – both at home and globally – organizers are yet to determine the official attendance numbers.
The Ahmedabad Stadium is the largest cricket stadium in terms of capacity with over 110,000 seats.
ESPNcricinfo has sent a query to both ICC and BCCI, the hosts of the tournament. There was also no response from ICC and BCCI to a query about the number of seats that have officially gone on sale for the big competition. When the ticket sales plan for the tournament was released in late August, the BCCI said September 3 was only for tickets for the India-Pakistan match. On 8 October, the BCCI announced that it would put another 14,000 tickets on sale for the match. Three days later, the BCCI published a post on X (formerly Twitter) announcing the sale of another batch of tickets – without revealing numbers – originally intended for its official partners.
