{"id":93718,"date":"2025-08-25T03:16:31","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T03:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/93718\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T03:16:31","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T03:16:31","slug":"nightmare-for-fans-a-month-out-from-first-ball-hurts-womens-cricket-world-cup-womens-cricket-world-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/93718\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Nightmare\u2019 for fans a month out from first ball hurts Women\u2019s Cricket World Cup | Women’s Cricket World Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sue Kitchen has her flights and hotels booked for next month\u2019s Women\u2019s Cricket<\/a> World Cup in India. Her excitement, however, has gradually dissolved into anxiousness as she waits for news of the match tickets going on sale. The ICC insists this will be the biggest Women\u2019s World Cup yet. But with just over a month to go, travelling fans are grappling with last-minute surprises, and the players are preparing to make their way to unfamiliar, uninspiring venues.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook group of women\u2019s cricket supporters, Kitchen describes the planning process for her upcoming trip from England as a \u201cnightmare\u201d. Her sentiments are shared by other fans outside India, many of whom have already entered the ticket ballot for the 2026 Women\u2019s T20 World Cup in England<\/a>. Some have even abandoned their travel plans for India due to the logistical challenges.<\/p>\n

Former Australia cricketer Pauline Bunce, who toured India for the 1978 edition of the tournament, wrote at the time in the Sportsweek magazine about the \u201cmess\u201d of playing in the subcontinent. The story, recently retrieved from the archives by cricket historian Ankit Verma, revealed how the visiting teams landed in the then fledgling cricketing nation only to find out the Women\u2019s Cricket Association of India had not arranged a schedule and the government had denied permission for the matches.<\/p>\n

Nearly half a century has passed since then and some things have changed. The ICC now governs the women\u2019s game, India is a cricket-mad country and its governing body, the BCCI, is the richest cricket board in the world. But the upcoming women\u2019s 50-over World Cup is marred by similar administrative issues as the 1978 event.<\/p>\n

With 40 days before the first game, its venue and that of the final were under a cloud, before Navi Mumbai was announced as the replacement for Bengaluru late last week. The southern Indian city lost the hosting rights after a crowd crush at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in which 11 fans celebrating Royal Challengers Bengaluru\u2019s IPL victory died<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Navi Mumbai, a satellite city to India\u2019s financial capital Mumbai, is a redeeming addition to the list of venues otherwise bereft of major cricketing centres in the primary host nation. Other than the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, which will host all of Pakistan\u2019s games due to geopolitical reasons, the rest of the list is made up of Guwahati, Indore and Visakhapatnam \u2013 all non-metropolitan cities. The propensity of local people there to turn out for women\u2019s games remains largely untested. Among these venues, only Visakhapatnam has hosted women\u2019s ODIs, while three women\u2019s T20Is were played in Guwahati in 2019. Indore has never hosted women\u2019s international cricket.<\/p>\n

Seeing Meg Lanning lift the T20 World Cup trophy at a packed MCG in 2020 was a bold statement for women\u2019s place in cricket. Photograph: Michael Dodge\/AAP<\/p>\n

To add to fans\u2019 woes, last week\u2019s schedule update also shuffled the venues for other games. Kitchen is now staring down cancellation costs and preparing to shell out more for fresh bookings much closer to her travel dates. In delaying the release of tickets, the organisers expect international fans to carry the burden of paying for flights and accommodation, as well as domestic connections, without even having their place in the stands secured. Seats at games not featuring the host nation face a serious threat of going empty, and the World Cup risks losing the charm and atmosphere that visiting fans decked out in all their colours bring.<\/p>\n

The release of tickets for the 2026 Women\u2019s T20 World Cup a year in advance suggests the constraints don\u2019t lie with the ICC. To put things in context, similar organisational blemishes plagued the last men\u2019s Cricket World Cup hosted by India in 2023. But while men\u2019s cricket is a surefire crowd-puller in the country, the women\u2019s game is at a formative stage where the organisers must play all their cards right.<\/p>\n

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Taking the women\u2019s game to as yet untested corners of India could indeed bring in a new audience and inspire more young girls to take up the sport. But bilateral series would arguably be better suited to this righteous consideration. Instead, the BCCI has chosen big venues in cities like Mumbai and Chennai to host those series in the post-Covid years, but barring the late inclusion of Navi Mumbai, they have been passed over for this tournament. A World Cup is too big a stage to take a punt on risking empty stands and a subdued atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Cricket\u2019s revered centres have embraced the women\u2019s game in recent years. Images of Heather Knight and Meg Lanning lifting trophies at Lord\u2019s and the MCG in front of packed crowds made a bold statement for cricket now equally being a women\u2019s sport. To deny the current crop of the world\u2019s best players and their fans the same opportunity \u2013 the iconic venues, the atmosphere, the memories \u2013 is to take a step backwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sue Kitchen has her flights and hotels booked for next month\u2019s Women\u2019s Cricket World Cup in India. Her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-93718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}