The ICC have come in for significant criticism after announcing a revised version of the Cricket World Cup 2023 schedule on August 9, less than two months before the start of the tournament.

The 2023 World Cup schedule was first released on June 27, around 100 days before the start of the event – an already unprecedented delay compared to the previous edition where the fixtures were released more than a year in advance.

Reports then emerged that the schedule might undergo further revisions. An updated version of the fixture list was finally released on August 9, around a month and a half after the initial release, and with less than two months to go until the first match of the tournament, scheduled on October 5.

A total of nine games were rescheduled, amounting to one in every six group-stage matches. These include India’s game against Pakistan, the most anticipated first-round clash. England, the World Cup holders, are the most affected team, with three of their nine games rearranged.

Even now, fans are still not able to buy tickets, with sales for non-India games starting on August 25, and sales for India games staggered from August 31 onwards.

This has resulted in widespread reactions from the cricket community which has been frustrated with the last-minute changes in schedule, with the ICC and BCCI receiving a lot of flak.

This is a complete fiasco; hard to imagine this happening in any other major sport https://t.co/MmSu26Bhxe

— Tim Wigmore (@timwig) August 9, 2023

FIFA and the IOC rightly get a lot of criticism, but it’s impossible to imagine an Olympic Games or football World Cup being run in such an amateurish and ad hoc manner just 8 weeks before it was meant to begin.

Yet in this case, there’s just a shrug of “that’s cricket”. https://t.co/jijjYT2Pta

— hypocaust (@_hypocaust) August 9, 2023

Can’t even book flights yet 🙃 https://t.co/gqQPXsE9OR pic.twitter.com/XxbfhegmDH

— Ticker Merchant (@WillMarshall15) August 9, 2023

It promises to be the most exciting World Cup yet. So exciting you won’t even know who is playing who until the day of the game! https://t.co/PnFI7weYo4

— Daniel Cherny (@DanielCherny) August 9, 2023

Total contempt and disregard for supporters… https://t.co/h4eMHk0RNw

— Paul Newman (@Paul_NewmanDM) August 9, 2023