Rows of empty seats at CWC

Ahmedabad - When Ricky Ponting walked out on Monday for Australia's opening World Cup match against Zimbabwe, all he could see was row after row of empty seats at the Sardar Patel Stadium.

As triple world champions, Ponting's men are used to playing to packed stadiums in Australia and abroad but in India it appears they are not a big draw - at least not yet.

Barely a third of the seats in the 55 000-seater stadium were filled on Monday for the Group A match and since Australia will not play hosts India in any round-robin encounters, they may have to get used to being snubbed by the locals.

An ICC spokesperson admitted it was disappointing to see such a poor turnout for a match involving the world champions and said the governing body was working with local organisers to attract more fans to games not featuring India.

"What the ICC has done is we have asked the local organisers to give us some tickets for the matches we have identified as not being sell-outs," the spokesman said.

"We will then involve our radio partners to run promotional events called Ticket Hunt where people will be asked to take part in events which will allow them to come to the grounds and maybe win a television or a motorbike.

"In India the problem is it's decentralised so it depends on the local organisers to decide how many tickets they can hand over to us. For example, we got 600 tickets for this match."

India will host 29 of the 49 matches in the 2011 edition of the World Cup in eight stadiums holding from around 33 000 to 100 000-capacity crowds.

To counter the problems, local organisers are trying to bus in school children for the matches but that initiative has also thrown up problems as the tournament clashes with the year-end exams in the country.

In Sri Lanka, local organisers have slashed ticket prices by more than 50%, with some available for as low as SLR 20 ($0.18) to SLR 30, to boost crowd attendances.

So until the Indian authorities find a way to solve the problems in their own backyards, it seems the all-conquering Australians, along with all the foreign also-ran teams, might just have to get used being out there on their own.