~snip~
I don't understand the scheduling. First of all, I would have expected the hosts (India) to play against the defending champions (England) in the opening match. And secondly, the opening match should ideally be scheduled on weekend. None of this was followed and in the end we got such a sparse crowd. I have posted this a few times. I think that the BCCI is not that serious about hosting the world cup. Even the schedule was released a few days before the opening match and some of the teams are not happy with the fact that they need to move from one end of the country to the other every week.
There might be some truth to it because of IPL but hosting an ICC event is also a lucrative business so I am not completely sure. Having said that if I look at the big picture then I believe the Big guys (Broadcasters) are not into ODI as a format anymore, there are already enough murmurs about broadcasters pulling out the plug from this. Let's see what happens in the next media rights cycle.
India is a very big country and I've said this a couple of times, we have "no fixed venue systems" for matches due to State boards. BCCI opted for 10 states and UT for this edition and Punjab Cricket Association along with others already made some accusations because they were left out so it's not straightforward (lots of state politics because every political party in India directly or indirectly is in charge of State Board Cricket) and BCCI has to cover all of India, no matter what.
This map and data should give some idea.
