The first batch of tickets for India’s matches at the ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 went live on August 29, and it was not a pleasant experience for the fans.

Subscribe to the Wisden Cricket YouTube channel for post-match analysis, player interviews, and much more.

The buildup for the 2023 World Cup has been far from ideal from the fans’ perspective. After an unprecedented delay in the announcement of the tournament schedule messed with the travel plans of fans, the resentment peaked on the evening of August 29, the day when the tickets for India’s World Cup matches went on pre-sale for Mastercard users.

The tickets went live at 6 pm Indian time on BookMyShow, ICC’s ticketing partner for the World Cup. To handle the large volume of people, BookMyShow set up a virtual queue system where people would be granted access to the booking portal on a first-come-first-serve basis. Things, however, didn’t go to plan.

Chaos ensued for a couple of hours as fans logged on in anticipation and were met with nothing but disappointment in the form of seemingly never-ending virtual waiting queues and system crashes on the ticketing platform.

“Made me wonder if anyone even got tickets or if the whole thing was a scam!” was the immediate reaction of Myra, a fan from Mumbai. Looking to book four tickets for the India-Sri Lanka game scheduled in her city on November 2, she expressed her frustration at the lack of clarity: “The whole process seems like it is utterly mismanaged. There is a lack of clarity with regard to why we are unable to access the portal or buy the tickets.

“At 6pm, when the sale was supposed to start, we were added to a queue. After waiting for more than an hour, we couldn’t access the portal at all. There should have been some sort of clarity from their end if the site crashed or the tickets were sold out.”

Rohan, a software engineer in Bangalore, tried booking for two venues – Kolkata and Ahmedabad – but to no avail. He explained the ordeal of having to wait in queues with fluctuating waiting times in detail: “As soon as I entered the platform to book India vs Pakistan tickets, I didn’t find the option to do so. I also noticed India vs South Africa was showing sold out. This went on for around 10 mins. Then the platform seemed to refresh and I could see all match tickets were available.

“I selected the India vs Pakistan game and the platform put me in a queue. The initial estimated wait time was 11 minutes but it made me wait for almost an hour. I tried to book just one seat and I must have tried around 20 times, but every time I clicked ‘Book’, I would get an error. Eventually, the website kicked me out of the ticket booking screen and then again put me in a five-plus-hour-long queue.”

[breakout id=”0″][/breakout]

Aman from Kolkata tried to book tickets for the India-South Africa game at the Eden Gardens on November 5, and had a similarly frustrating experience with the fluctuating waiting times: “I got in the queue in the first three minutes. Waiting time shown initially was 15 minutes. The timer kept increasing and decreasing and around 50 minutes later I got to the next page, where it showed that all tickets were sold out.”

There were countless other similar experiences from fans around the country and beyond. The common sentiment was of frustration towards BCCI and ICC for not being able to create better arrangements for an event that is supposed to be the pinnacle of the sport.

While there are still several opportunities to book tickets for the World Cup given the phase-wise nature of the sale, the experience during the pre-sale on August 29 has left a bitter taste in the mouth of the fans, adding to the resentment built from the changing schedules.

A month before the start of the most anticipated tournament in the sport, this is not how the biggest stakeholders of the game should be feeling.

The identities of the fans were changed on request.

Related tags:

Series Editorial