Putting the 'World' back into Cricket's World Cups

Let's get the obvious caveat out of the way first. No sport could possibly match football's World Cup. Not cricket, not rugby, not field hockey, not basketball, not anything else. The football World Cup exists on a different plane. The number of countries that care, the fans who travel, the political weight of national teams, the colours, the flags, the songs, the feeling that the whole world has stopped for a month is unlike anything else in world sport. Nothing other than the Olympics comes close to that.

But that should not become an excuse for every other sport to think small.

Rugby is worth pausing on here, because it shows what ambition actually looks like. The Rugby World Cup will never rival football either. But World Rugby has not used that as an excuse to stay safe. In 2019 they took their tournament to Japan, the first time it had ever been staged in Asia, outside rugby's traditional heartlands of Europe and the southern hemisphere. The gamble paid off spectacularly.  Fans from 178 nations showed up. The tournament drew million of viewers worldwide, with a 26% jump from the previous edition, and generated £4.3 billion in economic output for Japan, making it the most commercially successful Rugby World Cup ever. [1] By 2023, World Rugby confirmed the tournament would expand from 20 to 24 teams from 2027, and locked in the USA as host for 2031, with a ten-year runway to build the sport there. [2] Rugby did not wait for the spreadsheet to read comfortably before planting flags in new places. 

Cricket has forever had the same opportunity and keeps declining to take it, rather actively shrinking its flagship 50-over men’s WC since 2007 while staking claim ito being the second most popular sport in the world.

A tournament does not have to be the scale of football to be genuinely global. Field hockey will never dominate the global attention economy, but it still has deep roots across Europe, South Asia, Oceania, Africa and Latin America. Cricket also has a real world: South Asia, the Caribbean, England, Australia, New Zealand, southern Africa, parts of Europe, growing pockets in North America, and associate nations whose fans are often far more alive than the sport's administrators seem to recognise. The ICC represents more than 100 members worldwide. [3] So the complaint is not that cricket World Cups do not feel like football World Cups. They never will and do not have to. The complaint is that cricket World Cups often do not even feel like the best version of what cricket World Cups could be.

That is the part fans should be asking questions about. Not the usual "which sport is better" nonsense, for all sport is made up and their importance subjective. The question is much simpler: why does cricket, a sport with enough countries, enough diasporas, enough travelling fans, enough history and enough emotional weight, so often stage its biggest events as though only one or two markets really matter? Why does it lack the imagination, the scheduling discipline, and the basic ticketing infrastructure to even showcase itself properly?

Full stadia do not always tell you of the global health of the sport

First, there is the part a lot of Indian fans do not get, or do not want to get. When 90,000 blue shirts fill Ahmedabad, it looks great on television. It shows India's scale, India's passion and its buying power. Indian fans are one of cricket's greatest assets, and any serious conversation about the sport's global future must start there.

But the World Cup is not supposed to be a demand-harvesting exercise for the biggest available fanbase. A World Cup crowd should be a showcase of the world of that sport. Not perfectly, not equally, not in some fantasy where every country brings 20,000 fans, but enough that the event feels like it belongs to more than whoever has the largest population.

Football, and even Rugby understands this way better than the 'second most popular sport' on earth. Not perfectly, and not without its own problems around pricing, corporate tickets and resale. FIFA World Cups at least build on the idea that participating teams must have supporter allocations, that fans can apply through their national associations, and that travelling support is a category the tournament must plan for. For the 2026 World Cup, FIFA's own ticketing material refers to Participating Member Association supporter tickets, with each national association setting eligibility criteria and its own application process. [4], [5] Dynamic pricing has also been confirmed for 2026, [6], [7] and the FA reportedly held back some £45 tickets specifically to curb resale abuse. [8] In all this, the basic assumption that the tournament must plan for a diverse supporter presence, is a core premise. You cannot just open an online queue and pretend that is a fair system.

Cricket does this far too often. It treats access as an afterthought and then acts surprised when the crowd reflects only the biggest market by population. The ICC schedules the event, sells the tickets, structures the access in a way that makes one outcome almost inevitable, and then treats that outcome as market truth. If you put tickets on sale late, run a first-come-first-served scramble and stage the whole thing in a market where one fanbase is larger than everyone else combined, there is only one possible result. India fills the ground. And the lesson learnt by administrators, broadcasters and fans becomes that only India can fill the ground. However, that is not a lesson but a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Therefore, "but the stadium was full" is not a serious defence of a badly imagined tournament. A full stadium is not the same thing as a diverse crowd in a global sport. A full stadium that over-represents one set of fans can still be evidence that the tournament has failed to include enough of the cricketing world.

The 2023 World Cup: of, by and for India

The 2023 ODI World Cup in India was the clearest recent example of this. The tournament began on October 5. The fixture list was announced only on June 27. [9] Tickets did not go on sale until August 25, after an updated schedule had to be released. [10] That timeline is not just a logistical mess but also greatly exclusionary. Think about what you are asking of a New Zealand, South African, Dutch, Afghan, Bangladeshi, Australian, English, Sri Lankan, or neutral fan trying to plan a once-in-four-years trip around that chaos. Pakistan fans can be spared of even the imagination. Flights, visas, hotels, internal travel across a vast country, leave from work. All of it depends on knowing where and when your team is playing. 

Cricket acts as if this is a minor operational detail. It is not.

The result was visible on the first afternoon of the 2023 ICC Cricket World Cup. England v New Zealand, a repeat of the 2019 final, opened the tournament at the 100,000-capacity venue at Ahmedabad. On paper that sounds grand. On television, the empty seats made the whole thing look undercooked before a ball had been bowled. [11], [12], [13] ESPNcricinfo had already asked before the tournament why organisers were not prioritising fans, [14] and Al Jazeera later reported fan frustration at what supporters described as a chaotic and expensive process. [15] Attendances picked up as the tournament went on for neutral games and never a problem for games involving India, which seemed like the only point of the tournament.

The ICC loves talking about hundreds of millions of fans. When it comes to the practical work of helping those fans actually attend, the sport behaves as though attendance is somebody else's problem.

When cricket showed ambition...

The frustrating part is that cricket has not always been this unimaginative and unambitious.

The 2003 World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya was not perfect. It had political complications, security concerns, forfeits and all the unevenness that comes with a large, spread-out tournament. But it felt alive in a way too many modern ICC events do not (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaO8rdYO9L0&t=7s). It also was not a commercial disaster. Across 52 matches and the opening ceremony, the tournament drew 626,845 spectators from an available capacity of 825,000, roughly 76% capacity. [16] This was without any single large market being catered to.

Kenya was the standout story. Nairobi hosted matches. Sri Lanka travelled there and lost by 53 runs. [17] Kenya went on to become the first non-Test-playing nation to reach a World Cup semi-final (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_aFwIGDhfs). It is proof of what happens when the sport's map is allowed to stretch. Between 2000 and 2003, Nairobi was not a token outpost and went on to become part of the sport's permanent memory.

The Champions Trophy had a similar instinct in its earlier incarnation. The ICC KnockOut Trophy's 1998 edition was played in Dhaka; the 2000 edition in Nairobi. It told emerging cricket countries they were not just qualification pathways or development projects and they could dream of being at the sport's centre.

That instinct has faded badly. Post-2007, cricket has mostly staged its biggest events with the caution of a closed shop. Put the biggest fixtures in the safest commercial markets. Chase broadcast certainty. Schedule for Indian prime time regardless of where the host crowd lives. Avoid anything that does not immediately maximise revenue. The result is a world sport that behaves like a domestic Indian product with unwelcome international guests.

Lower profit is not the same thing as financial loss

The lazy defense of this insular appraoch is that cricket cannot afford anything else because everything depends on India. There are obvious merits to that. India brings the biggest television audience, the largest travel demand, the mightiest sponsorship pull and a commercial upside nobody else comes close to matching. Pretending otherwise is pointless.

But lower profit is not the same thing as financial loss. Cricket keeps refusing to make this distinction.

A tournament with India in the final will probably make more money than one without India in the final. Fine. That does not mean a tournament without India collapses. The 2025 World Test Championship final was a decent test case. India did not qualify. Reports suggested Lord's might make around £4 million less than it would have with India in the final, with ticket prices reportedly reduced. [18] That sounds bleak until you find out what actually happened: public tickets sold out, press access was oversubscribed, and London's Australian and South African communities showed up in force. [19] South Africa beat Australia in a compelling final, ending a long wait for a major ICC title under their first Black African captain. [20] It was genuinely memorable.

Less money than an India final? Sure. A failure? Obviously not.

Same with the 2019 World Cup final. England v New Zealand was not the most commercially optimised combination. It became one of the most famous cricket matches ever played. Lord's was full, the UK television audience peaked at 8.3 million across Channel 4 and Sky, [21] and the sport got the kind of free-to-air national moment in England it had been crying out for. There were even ticketing complications because the final was not India. Indian fans had reportedly bought 41% of final tickets expecting their team to get there. [22] When India lost the semi-final, Jimmy Neesham publicly asked them to resell through official channels rather than leave seats empty. [23] That episode actually underlines the broader point about planning. Cricket's ticketing systems need to anticipate who might actually need access once finalists are known. If allocations and resale are not properly thought through, you end up with the wrong people holding too many tickets, empty stands despite a sellout, and fans from smaller nations scrambling at the last moment to witness their side create history.

India's absence from that 2019 final did not stop it from becoming the defining World Cup match in the sport's modern history. This is where cricket administrators need to stop confusing maximum revenue with viability. India should be central to cricket because India is central to cricket. But centrality should not become dependency, and dependency should not become an excuse to treat everyone else as supporting characters.

South Africa v Australia at Lord's can matter. So can New Zealand v South Africa at Eden Park. Nepal v Netherlands in Dallas. Kenya v Sri Lanka in Nairobi. West Indies v England under Barbados lights or a Women's T20 World Cup final between South Africa and Australia at Newlands. Different scales, different audiences, different atmospheres but all of it is cricket's music.

If cricket only defines success as maximum monetisation of Indian attention, it will keep shrinking its own imagination. It might make more money in the short term. But the message that everyone else is a supporting character in someone else's tournament will erode global interest much faster than non-prime-time TV slots.

Diverse crowds make better television

There are places where cricket World Cups tend to feel more global almost by default.

The UK is one. It has a large and varied cricketing diaspora, with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Caribbean, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Afghanistan, Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands all finding support there. That does not make England a perfect host, but the demographics give organisers a safety net regardless of how little effort they put in. Even games not involving England can feel alive.

The 2019 World Cup bore this out. Government evidence submitted after the tournament said tickets were sold to people in 148 countries, overseas visitors accounted for 16% of sales, and 36% of tournament tickets went to South Asian fans, a healthy balance. [24] Cricket's global public shows up when the event is placed somewhere they can realistically get to.

Tournaments in the subcontinent cannot assume this happens automatically. India's population and cricket culture are so vast that without deliberate planning, the tournament will naturally bend toward one dominant visual identity. That is not a criticism of Indian fans. The bigger the host market, the more deliberate the countermeasures need to be. If you want both sets of supporters present for India v Afghanistan or India v Netherlands, you cannot open a portal and hope for the best. The largest fanbase wins that contest every time.

Lessons from the recent T20 World Cups

The 2024 T20 World Cup in the West Indies and USA showed both the problem and the possibility. In many respects it was terribly organised with the New York pitches being poor enough that the ICC publicly acknowledged they had not performed as intended, [25] and pre-tournament reporting from Dallas found minimal local awareness of the event. [26] Not ideal when the whole point was to introduce cricket to a new American public.

And yet, the tournament also produced moments that cut against cricket's pessimism about new markets. USA v Canada in Dallas felt like a real opening night celebration. Nepal's games showed what happens when an associate nation with an emotionally intense diaspora is given a stage. ESPNcricinfo described the atmosphere in Dallas as "passionate silence," after one of Nepal’s close defeats, a diaspora crowd finding its voice. [28] When Afghanistan reached the semi-finals, thousands celebrated in Khost and Jalalabad. [29] That is what World Cups do at their best, give scattered public a national sporting language.

The 2024 tournament also made something else very clear. Scheduling is not peripheral to atmosphere. The Caribbean did not suddenly forget how to host cricket. The problem was that too much of the tournament was scheduled for television audiences elsewhere, specifically India, rather than for the rhythms of the host region. A 10:30am start in the Caribbean makes sense for Indian prime time. It is not how you get the best version of a Caribbean crowd. To quote Ali Martin from the Guardian, T20 cricket in the Caribbean is about "bacchanal after dark", of sultry evenings, a white ball disappearing into stands already moving to a soca beat. [30] Night games in the 2024 T20 WC gave glimpses of that, even in matches not involving West Indies. (https://www.icc-cricket.com/videos/south-africa-overcome-gritty-west-indies-to-continue-unbeaten-run-into-semi-finals-match-highlights-t20wc-2024)

A stark contrast to day games based on administrative logic of profit maximization of TV revenue. That is the wrong trade-off for a World Cup.

The 2026 T20 World Cup added more evidence. Nepal, against England at Wankhede, had 17,000 fans mostly behind them and came close enough to give one of the established sides a genuine scare. [31], [32], [33] All their games were played amid fanatical support, some of the loudest crowds of the tournament. [34] Italy, the tournament debutant, beat Nepal and competed against stronger sides — [35], [36] a strong case, as several associate players argued afterwards, for more fixtures, more exposure, more funding. [37], [38] The response to 2024's rough edges in the USA should not be a retreat to safer markets. It should be better execution and loftier global ambition.

A lesson from the women's game

The 2023 Women's T20 World Cup in South Africa was not operating at football's scale. It was not even operating at men's cricket scale. But it felt meaningful, local and celebratory. The opening match between South Africa and Sri Lanka at Newlands drew 7,736 — at the time the highest crowd for a women's international in the country at that time. [43]

That is what success looks like for a format growing into itself. It does not need to be a full Maracanã. It needs to be authentic to its own scale, community and growth curve. The correct measure is not whether it looked like India v Pakistan at the MCG. The correct measure is whether the event created the best conditions for its relevant communities to gather, participate and be visible. By that standard, a record crowd at Newlands for the 2023 Women's final can be more meaningful than a much larger but far less diverse crowd at Ahmedabad in the men's final the same year.

Blowouts are not a reason to shrink the World Cup

The same narrowness appears in how cricket talks about associate nations. A smaller team loses heavily, and the reaction from cricket's elites is immediate -- do they belong? Are there too many teams? Is this a bad advert for the sport?

This is a deeply unserious way for a world sport to think. Blowouts happen everywhere. Football has them. Rugby has them. The Olympics are full of them. World Cups are not just about finding the champion as efficiently as possible. They are also about offering the biggest platform to a wider group, building aspiration, and giving emerging teams repeated exposure to the level they are trying to reach.

Cricket's problem with associates is cultural as much as structural. The sport claims to want growth but often treats growing teams as irritants. It likes the romance of an upset after it happens, but dislikes the conditions that make upsets possible (more teams, more games, uneven contests, patient investment, and the inevitable blowouts that come with all of that).

One practical fix is better use of double headers at T20 World Cups. If India, Pakistan, England, Australia or West Indies are playing in the evening, stage Nepal, Netherlands, Scotland, Namibia, USA or Canada in the afternoon at the same venue. Price accordingly. Promote both games. Give the associate team a real crowd rather than an empty stadium at an 11am slot. This would not solve everything overnight, but it would signal a change in ambition. A World Cup is meant to be a festival of the sport and not just a commercial exercise centered around its established brands.

What actually needs to change

None of this requires a revolution. It requires competent event design.

ODI World Cup schedules should be released at least a year in advance, with qualifier slots left as placeholders. "Qualifier 1" and "Qualifier 2" are not beyond human comprehension, and the sport should stop treating them as an excuse for late announcements.

Ticketing needs proper structure: neutral ballots, supporter allocations, host-city windows, resale management, and clearly communicated release dates well in advance. For example, the 2026 Womens T20 World Cup ballot was imperfect but much closer to how a global event should work than the late scramble of 2023.

Match timings should serve the host crowd, not just the most lucrative broadcast market. Nobody is pretending television does not matter. But when the tournament is in the Caribbean, give it the best chance to look and sound like the Caribbean. When it is in South Africa, let Durban or Cape Town under lights feel distinctly like those places. Stop flattening the live event so every fixture can be optimised for the same broadcast window.

Cricket also needs more imaginative geography. The Caribbean should not be treated as a nostalgic backdrop. Africa should not be reduced to South Africa. Europe should not mean England plus tokenism. North America should not mean one India-Pakistan cash grab. Asia should not mean only the largest commercial markets. A global sport must plant flags before the spreadsheet justifies it. That is how a sport matures.

Asking the right questions

Indian fans especially need to ask better questions of the ICC.

The point is not to feel guilty for turning up. Indian fans fund the sport, fill stadiums, create spectacle, and give cricket a scale it would otherwise lack. The problem is an administrative class that uses Indian support as an excuse not to build anything broader. When 90,000 blue shirts fill a stadium, that is genuinely beautiful. But when a supposedly global event produces the same visual language over and over, something has been lost. A World Cup should contain India's scale without being swallowed by it.

The tragedy is that cricket already has the raw material in front of its eyes, even in its own flawed world events. Afghanistan and Nepal bring crowds that have changed cricket's texture. The Netherlands, Scotland, Namibia and the USA are building cricket publics outside the usual map. Kenya succesfully proved associate cricket can have lofty ambitions. The Caribbean has a crowd culture the sport keeps treating as scenery. South Africa, New Zealand, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Australia and England all bring their own histories and habits. There is enough of a world in there if they are made to feel welcome.

A World Cup is a month-long advertisement for a sport's relevance. It tells casual viewers what the game is, who it belongs to, where it lives, and why it matters. If the answer is always the same teams, the same markets, the same ticketing chaos, the same broadcast-first scheduling and the same short-term revenue logic, then cricket should not be surprised when its global claim feels thin.

The low-hanging fixes

Announce schedules early. Use ballots and seat allocations for all fanbases where demand is extreme. Bundle games featuring emerging nations intelligently. Promote host cities. Treat diaspora communities as stakeholders. Rotate events with imagination. Stop treating blowouts as arguments against inclusion. Stop rigging tournament grouping and scheduling around the richest fixtures. Schedule so the host crowd can actually bring the thing to life. Give people time to travel. Give them reason to believe they are wanted.

The 2027 Cricket World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia returning to southern Africa [44]  is now close enough to be urgent. A window of October 4 to November 21 has still only reported to be 'broadly approved’. [45] For travelling fans, a year is not comfortable lead time.

And yet as things stand, we still do not know enough. Where are the provisional fixtures? The venue allocations? The ticket windows? The supporter plans? The evidence that anyone has learned anything from 2023? Southern Africa has the history, the grounds, the time zones, the culture, the diaspora bases and the associate-host story in Namibia. It has the memory of 2003. It has the potential to make a Cricket World Cup feel like cricket's world has actually gathered somewhere together. But only if the people running it act like that is what they are trying to do.

Cricket World Cups will never look or sound like football World Cups. They do not have to. But they can feel far more global than they currently do. The sport already has enough fans for a World Cup to feel like a genuine celebration of a shared sporting culture. What it lacks is the will to stage itself as though all of them count.

Aditya,

PCCI Podcast

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References

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[29] Reuters. (2024, June 25). Afghans celebrate as cricket team reaches T20 World Cup semi-finals. https://www.reuters.com/sports/cricket/afghans-celebrate-cricket-team-reaches-t20-world-cup-semi-finals-2024-06-25/

[30] The Guardian. (2024, June 18). England move under lights to take on peak-form West Indies. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jun/18/england-move-under-lights-to-take-on-peak-form-west-indies

[31] ESPNcricinfo. (2026, February 8). Nepal's Cardiac Kids give England the fright of their lives. https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-2026-nepal-cardiac-kids-give-england-the-fright-of-their-lives-1522964

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[34] ESPNcricinfo. (2026, February 17). Nepal win 'the loudest game' for their fantastic fanatics. https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-2026-nep-vs-sco-nepal-win-a-world-cup-game-amid-fanatical-support-at-wankhede-stadium-1524819

[35] ICC. (2026, February 12). Italy want more after fairytale chapter at T20 World Cup. https://www.icc-cricket.com/tournaments/mens-t20-world-cup-2026/news/italy-want-more-after-fairytale-chapter-at-t20-world-cup

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[37] ESPNcricinfo. (2026, February 16). Tom Bruce wants more exposure for Associate teams. https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-2026-nepal-vs-scotland-tom-bruce-wants-more-exposure-for-associate-teams-1524572

[38] ESPNcricinfo. (2026, February 19). Associates need "more opportunities against best nations". https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-2026-afg-vs-can-associates-need-more-opportunities-against-best-nations-saad-bin-zafar-1525185

[39] ICC. (2025, December 11). ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2026 tickets to go live today; prices start at ₹100 and LKR1000. https://www.icc-cricket.com/media-releases/icc-men-s-t20-world-cup-2026-tickets-to-go-live-today-prices-start-at-100-and-lkr1000

[40] ICC. (2026, February 10). Engagement soaring as fans across the world soak up World Cup action during opening weekend. https://www.icc-cricket.com/media-releases/engagement-soaring-as-fans-across-the-world-soak-up-world-cup-action-during-opening-weekend

[41] ESPNcricinfo. (2026, February 13). Chepauk finds a new love on Valentine's Day eve. https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/t20-world-cup-2026-chepauk-fans-make-it-a-home-match-for-usa-in-chennai-against-netherlands-1524007

[42] ESPNcricinfo. (2026, February 13). Mukkamalla 79, Harmeet four-for lead USA's trouncing of Netherlands. https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/icc-men-s-t20-world-cup-2025-26-1502138/netherlands-vs-united-states-of-america-21st-match-group-a-1512739/match-report

[43] SuperSport. (2023, February 22). Record crowds turn up for ICC Women's T20 World Cup group matches. https://supersport.com/hereforher/news/dde7fb90-3653-46b6-8f30-d528499731bb/record-crowds-turn-up-for-icc-women-s-t20-world-cup-group-matches

[44] ICC. (2025, May 28). Cricket World Cup League 2: State of Play on road to 2027. https://www.icc-cricket.com/tournaments/icc-cricket-world-cup-league-2/news/cricket-world-cup-league-2-state-of-play-on-road-to-2027

[45] India Today. (2026, June 11). Men's ODI World Cup 2027 set to run from October 4 to November 21. https://www.indiatoday.in/sports/cricket/story/mens-odi-world-cup-2027-dates-revealed-south-africa-namibia-zimbabwe-2925253-2026-06-11