Dwindling crowds at Australian stadiums a cause for concern; Hussey attributes it to too much cricket

Melbourne: Despite Australia making a clean sweep of the three-match ODI series against England, poor crowd attendance — a trend which began during the recently concluded Men’s T20 World Cup at home — continues to trouble the organisers in the country.

On Tuesday, Australia’s openers, Travis Head (152) and David Warner (106), broke several records on way to a 269-run partnership in the hosts’ 221-run victory (D/L method) but regrettably only 10,406 fans were in attendance at the MCG, which has a capacity of more than 90,000.

The previous low was in 1979 when 12,077 turned up to watch Australia and England, according to a report in sen.com.au on Wednesday.

Former Australia batter Mike Hussey said that the poor crowd figures across the series were due to a a lot of reasons.

“It was a Tuesday night; it was freezing cold and pretty wet down in Melbourne,” Hussey told sen.com.au on Wednesday. “They tried to squeeze this series in at the back end of a T20 World Cup and just before the Test matches.

“There’s so much cricket on these days as well (so) there’s only so many days of cricket you can actually go to. If you ask the current player, the schedule is very busy… there’s just one tournament after the other,” added the Australian great.

Australia start the Test match summer against the West Indies on November 30 in Perth.

–IANS