The MCC, which is the Marylebone Cricket Club, has suggested a reconsideration of ticket prices at Lord’s Cricket Ground after a damp squib of a turnout following England’s second Test win, as reported earlier. The venue had only had an audience of 9,000 from the 31,000 maximum permitted on the penultimate day of this contest to witness England secure the series with one match remaining.
All together now! The Telegraph reported earlier on concerns over tickets sales at Lord’s before this game. It was only able to sell 7,000 places for Day Four due to early finishes being a common occurrence during Bazball period.
Broadly speaking, by Day three; Sri Lanka were reduced 53-2 chasing a huge target of 483 runs so that destiny for them was nearly decided about Test number two. Gus Atkinson finally finished off things in expected manner recording another five wickets haul within ‘Home of Cricket’.
Several stands remained completely empty and closed henceforth for that day’s play making it obvious that MCC intends to introduce some measures against such situations.
“We will be paying particular attention to the structure of fourth-day tickets in our pricing reviews given the way that Test cricket is now being played. From the outset, we priced U16 tickets at just £15 for weekend days of our Test matches and introduced a group discount for day four.”
“It is difficult to dynamically discount tickets in hindsight when thousands of supporters have applied through our 2023 ballot process and paid the full price,” MCC chief secretary and executive Guy Lavender said in a statement.
Much like Lord’s, The Oval is also grappling with empty seats for the last parts of the third Test match in this series. The event itself has become meaningless because England leads it by 2-0 continuing their rich home season.
“It’s a shame that it wasn’t full” – England captain Ollie Pope comments on Lord’s turnout on Day 4
As England Captain Ollie Pope pointed out, the attendance at that famous stadium was so low that it demoralized a winning team after a commanding victory. He suggested that it could be due to too much playing time since there have been frequent games in recent times at all formats-playing field.
“A few of us have been strolling in each day and it was just like, ‘jeez, it seems quiet today’. It was kind of weird,” Pope said after the 190-run win at Lord’s.
“I’m not sure if people expected the game to be done by day four or not. So it’s a shame that it wasn’t full. But at the same time, it’s been a pretty heavy schedule this summer with, I guess, the Hundred, T20 Blast and a lot of Test matches. So, yeah, a shame it wasn’t a full house because it was obviously a good day’s play,” the stand-in skipper added.
The third Test between England and Sri Lanka is set to start on September 6.
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