ECB Hails Impact Of Cricket World Cup

The ECB has revealed that over 800,000 tickets were sold for this year’s Cricket World Cup as the tournament reached a dramatic conclusion with England’s victory over New Zealand at Lord’s.

Over 210,000 people bought a ticket to attend a match for the first time, with over 12,000 tickets having also been donated to children through the tournament’s Schools Programme.

Over 700,000 children and 12,000 teachers were engaged with the tournament across the country, according to the ECB, whose investment into clubs through the World Cup Small Grants Scheme also helped over 3,000 clubs to open their doors and celebrate with communities.

The ECB also revealed that 150,000 tickets were sold to girls and women, and 320,000 to fans from south Asian communities.

The ECB now has a plan to further grow the sport across England and Wales through its Inspiring Generations initiative, which will see over £770m invested into all aspects of cricket over the next five years.

ECB Chief Executive Tom Harrison said: “We will double participation in primary schools and transform the women’s and girls’ game – creating a clear pathway from All Stars Cricket to our elite teams. We will also capitalise on the huge level of interest we’ve seen across the World Cup from South Asian fans via our South Asian Action Plan.”

The final between England and New Zealand was shown free-to-air on Channel 4 after the broadcaster reached an agreement with Sky ahead of the match.

Channel 4 carried Sky’s coverage of the final from 9am, before it moved to the More4 channel at 1.15pm to accommodate Channel 4’s coverage of Formula One’s British Grand Prix. The cricket returned to Channel 4 once the race had finished, with coverage of the final peaking at 4.5 million views.

BBC Sport’s online coverage of the match proved popular, with its cricket live page attracting 39.7 million views, making it the most-viewed live story on the BBC to date.