I have tickets to see Australia play the Windies at the SCG next Friday. I’ll be cranky as if it’s all over in three hours. 
Bring back the five match Test series. Bring back the tri-series one day matches. Get rid of bash cricket.
Rant over. (Until maybe next Saturday, depending on the way the match went on Friday.)
The reason they changed most things was given as attendances dwindling. What will they do now ?
Maybe cheap test tickets for pensioners and the unemployed? The only people with enough time to go for all five days…
I’m not a fan of 20/20 either.
If we keep playing the way we did against SL, no one will want to go anyway.
It depends where you are and how big the grounds are though, right? People take days off work to go to the Thursday and Friday of test matches here - basically every game is sold out (it helps that we have smaller grounds in England). Tickets for the county championship on weekdays are generally very cheap though, otherwise no one would go through the gate.
I don’t know what this means in terms of trying to encourage people to go to Test Matches though - maybe British tastes run to the traditional and this can’t be replicated elsewhere.
England tests are sold out IME. At least in England. No idea why, except that the English love tgeie cricket and for some reason, lots of Scots show up at Headingly.
My wife got me tickets to the ODI against Sri Lanka in Brisbane recently. I went with my old man and brothers in law. Firstly we found that she had accidentally bought tickets in the non licensed section, and then Australia were all out for 74. At least we were home early, I guess.
Buying an Aussie one day ticket in advance is like going on a blind date nowadays, you’ve got no idea who you’ll be seeing.
Lords only holds 28,000. Headingley just 17,500. You could fill that if it was sited at Adelaide.
I’m a shift worker so, provided I can get my roster requests in early enough, I plan to go to a Test match next year but it really depends who we’ll be playing. Ditto a one day match. You couldn’t pay me to go to a bash game.
I wanted to apply for membership of the SCG a few years ago but knew only one member, so I couldn’t find a seconder and had to let my application go. My one friend who is a member says that it’s barely worth being a member these days because of the limit on ‘friend’ tickets they’ll issue. If they really wanted to encourage attendance at the Ground, wouldn’t you think they’d be making it easier for members to take friends instead of more difficult?
I know who I’ll be seeing; I just don’t know for how long or what the quality of the play will be.
Couldn’t agree more. I got tickets to the Oval Ashes test this year because a mate is a member at Surrey and is able to buy basically as many tickets as he wants before they go on general sale. It’s pretty easy getting membership (at Surrey at least) and there’s none of this proposing and seconding lark. You just plunk your money down, which makes it somewhat easier/less cliquey. As a result, Surrey has pretty decent attendances and the test tickets go very quickly in what is one of the bigger grounds in the country.
If the authorities want cricket to be successful - and test cricket in particular - the patrician attitude needs to stop and they need to make it easier for people to become involved and buy tickets. It’s why I can see, eventually, there being a move for day-night tests - as even though it could be very tricky batting in the evening - it will make it much more likely that people can drop into the game later on in the day/only take a half day off work/organise their shift patterns accordingly and thus boost interest.
When I was thinking of applying, it was still a ten year waiting list to actually become a member. A few years ago (not sure how long) TPTB decided it would be a good idea to offer ‘gold’ membership, ie not have to wait but the membership costs $15,000. No thanks.
Jesus. Similar things apply for the MCC at Lords (though the waiting list is 30 years or something similar - I knew a bloke at uni who was put on the waiting list by his dad when he was born) but it just seems so wrong for the good of the game to put such a bar on being able to easily get hold of tickets to games, especially when some games struggle to sell out. It would turn me off completely.
Still, I guess that’s the market right? Some people must be willing to pay it…
It must have looked doubtful when the Windies were 6-55 but you got a reasonable game at the end. I understand the crowd’s acknowledgement of Pollard’s performance (109 off 136 will 11 4s and 2 6s) was as remarkable as the performance itself.
Cumbrian, tickets at the SCG are the dearest in the country and the deal for plebs like me is really poor. Lousy, very expensive catering, no shade (see below), atrocious lack of parking, so everyone goes by bus. I could go on and on. The whole thing is mainly set up for members but I’m not about to fork out ~$15,000 or wait over ten years for a membership.
Indeed, penultima thule It did look as if it’d all be over very quickly. The game was good (not as good as Wednesday’s, though, where a win for the Windies was possible right up to the end.) Clarke getting dismissed on what could have been the last ball was a surprise.
The non-sport lowlight of my afternoon/evening was getting burnt to a crisp, fainting about three times and having to go to St Johns to be checked out. I wonder if I can persuade my tightarse friend to get tickets in Brewongle next year?