Former India player Virender Sehwag has called for giving free tickets to children for non-India games at the ongoing ICC Cricket World Cup 2023. However, the opening fixture of the 2023 ODI World Cup between England and New Zealand started in front of almost empty stands at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad today (October 5) as well.

However, the mere presence of spectators at the World Cup grabbed the eyeballs of the wider cricket public as people opined on how the BCCI and ICC’s mismanagement of the scheduling and ticketing process led to the situation where the tournament started in front of largely empty stands as well.

It is also noteworthy that, the Narendra Modi Stadium is the largest cricket stadium in the world with a capacity of around 132,000 people, which makes it look relatively empty even if there were fans in the stadium as well. Meanwhile, this could be a fact of the poor attendance for the match that the first match is being played on a weekday without India playing in it as well.

And, Virender Sehwag joined in on the discussion about the empty stands and stated that providing free tickets to school and college-going children for games not involving India at the World Cup could help as well.

“Hopefully after office hours, there should be more people coming in. But for games not featuring Bharat (India), there should be free tickets for school and college children,” said Sehwag. “With the fading interest in 50 over game, it will definitely help that youngsters get to experience a World Cup game and players get to play in front of a full stadium.”

However, a few days back, the new MCC President Mark Nicholas has also said that MCC “strongly believes” that ODIs should be restricted only to World Cups as well. “We think it’s difficult bilaterally now to justify them. They’re not filling grounds in a lot of countries,” said Nicholas.