LOW, POOR TURNOUTS SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISE
Wandering up to the Wankhede Stadium on the eve of this fourth Test was the heartening sight of huge queues snaking round the block as fans lined up to buy tickets.
This beautiful ground holds 33,000 people and the hope was Mumbai – the first big-city venue in this series – would provide a decent-sized crowd.
So it was disappointing then that the Wankhede, hosting its first Test since 2013, was less than half full on day one.
Thousands of visiting fans have descended on Mumbai to watch their team, no doubt tempted by the promise of winter sun and perhaps even a decent result at a venue where England have won their past two Tests.
Those people in the queues on Wednesday, though, were locals and that is the audience the Board for Control of Cricket in India want to attract back to Test cricket in their droves.
The BCCI have experimented with using newer, smaller venues of late in a bid to boost attendances. Rajkot and Visakhapatnam hosted their first Tests in the first two matches of this current series. It hasn’t been a unanimous success so far.
Rajkot was disappointing, with small attendances throughout, while Vizag was more encouraging as fans flocked in for the final two days to witness India’s victory.
What makes the underwhelming first-day crowd even more disappointing is the fact this is not only the first Test here since Sachin Tendulkar’s farewell match against West Indies in November 2013 but that students from colleges and schools across Mumbai have also been given free passes to enter the Wankhede. Given the majority of Indian people I have spoken to on this tour have told me they prefer T20 cricket, maybe poor turnouts at Tests shouldn’t be a surprise. INDIA captain Virat Kohli has railed against England’s decision to split their tour into separate Test and one-day legs to accommodate Christmas at home. England, who leave Chennai on December 21 and arrive back in Mumbai early in the New Year ahead of three ODIs and three T20s, always build in festive activities on tours of South Africa and Australia, which traditionally have had Boxing Day Tests.
Kohli, though, believes the same should apply to India. “We should come back for a month as well from England,” said Kohli. “We play there for three-and-a-half months and everything we do is in the media’s eyes, even our off time is scanned.
“Either they stay the whole tour or we come back for 25 days as well [on the next tour of England].” WHILE the majority of England’s players went to Dubai last weekend for some R&R ahead of the fourth Test, India’s squad headed en masse to Goa for the wedding of former team-mate Yuvraj Singh. Yuvraj has married an Essex girl in model Hazel Keech, who moved to India at the age of 18 and has become a TV star here.
Uns ur pr is ingly, Yuvraj’ s timing was far better than that of Ishant Sharma, who was released from India’s squad for fourth Test because he had arranged his own wedding to take place midway through the match.