Plenty of empty seats greeted England and New Zealand as they faced each other in the inaugural clash of the 2023 World Cup at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Thursday (October 5).

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The largest stadium in the world, with a capacity of approximately 132,000 spectators, featured plenty of empty seats with England walking out to bat amid limited supporters. Multiple screengrabs and visuals of the stadium in Ahmedabad showed pockets of spectators, but the venue had very limited attendance by the start of play at 2pm local time.

In the lead up to the tournament, the timing of the schedule announcement was largely criticised, with the BCCI releasing the fixtures with merely 100 days before the start of the event. The itinerary was tweaked after local state police authorities came into discussion, voicing their hesitation to host select matches as it clashed with festival dates in the country.

The final schedule of the World Cup was announced on 9 August 2023, less than two months before the start of the competition.

The tournament also faced a number of ticketing issues, with users complaining of the many hurdles they faced while booking their match passes on BookMyShow, the official ticketing partner of the World Cup.

The tickets for the match were still available on the website. However, a number of stands were unavailable, indicating they were either unavailable for sale or had been taken up already. With temperatures touching 33 degrees celcius, the general understanding is that crowd’s would get better by evening.

The India v Pakistan match, which will be played at the same stadium in less than ten days, is expected to be filled to capacity.

The ruling party of India, Bhartiya Janta Party’s Gujarat wing, also confirmed they were reserving 40,000 seats for women for the clash, offering them free tickets and coupons for lunch and tea during the game.

Lalit Wadhawan, the BJP vice-president of the Bodakdev area in Ahmedabad, said that the idea to bring women to the Narendra Modi Stadium was inspired by the successful passage of the Reservation Bill for Women in the Parliament last month.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Wadhawan said, “Around 30,000 to 40,000 women from Ahmedabad will be watching the game in the stadium tomorrow. Our volunteers have been asked to send the names and tickets were handed to them today. Tickets upar se aaya hai (We got these tickets from the top). Kya hai na, 33 per cent women reservation Bill bhi pass hua hai (See, even the 33 per cent women’s reservation Bill has been passed).”

However, he said the women would not be given transportation and that the party was not making any special efforts for that.

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