World Cup cricket: Long Island fans scrounge to get tickets for India vs. Pakistan match

One of the biggest rivalries in sports will unfold this June on Long Island when cricket powerhouses India and Pakistan collide on a specially made pitch in a World Cup match at Nassau County’s Eisenhower Park.

A temporary stadium now being built will hold 34,000 fans. But some Long Island fans say the tournament’s ticket lottery, intended to ensure fairness, shut them out of the game of a lifetime because it made no special provision for locals.

“It’s the first time in history that the game is coming here,” said Shaikh Shakil, a Westbury resident who runs an insurance firm. “Eisenhower is my backyard … We’re the ones going to suffer all the traffic, we’re the ones who live here and pay the tax, but there’s nowhere to find the tickets.”

In an email Thursday, Christopher Boyle, a Nassau County spokesman, said officials were “in the process of negotiations with the ICC and there will be tickets set aside for purchase by Nassau residents, probably on lottery basis.” He did not say how many tickets would be set aside or when they would be made available.

World Cup rivalry ramps up demand

Cricket’s sanctioning body, the International Cricket Council, announced last fall that Nassau County would be one of the venues for the Men’s T20 World Cup. T20 is a streamlined version of the game, played over several hours rather than days, that fills stadiums worldwide and draws hundreds of millions of international broadcast viewers.

Nassau is scheduled to host eight matches. The council announced Thursday that a new batch of tickets will be released to the public next week, including tickets for India-Ireland and United States-India but no new India-Pakistan tickets.

India and Pakistan field the world No. 1 and No. 5 T20 teams, a rivalry that mirrors and feeds off geopolitical tensions between the two nations, which, like many of the world’s cricket powers, were once colonies of Great Britain, where the sport was first played.

In 2022, the Census estimated there were 70,673 Long Islanders of Indian descent and 22,913 of Pakistani descent.

In February, close to 4 million people signed up for an online lottery for tournament tickets at venues across the United States and the Caribbean. For the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium — the formal name of the structure being erected at Eisenhower Park's Field 6 — there were about eight times as many applicants as available seats for the India-Pakistan game, according to the Council.

“The demand around India-Pakistan was astronomical, in the millions of ticket requests” from around the globe, said T20 USA Tournament CEO Brett Jones in a phone interview. While the Council reserved some tickets for sponsors, which Jones said was standard practice for global events, most were offered to the public. “With the ballot approach, we took an unbiased view, with no tracking of locations” of ticket applicants, Jones said. Tickets were awarded by an algorithm for “a purely fair, equal system across the board,” he said, adding that set-asides for local fans is “not standard practice.” 

Fans were given a week to sign up for the lottery. Winners got the right to buy tickets at rates starting at $175 for the marquee match or less for some less prominent matches.

Some of those tickets have reached the resale market. The ticket resale site StubHub this week showed 145 listings for India-Pakistan. The cheapest ticket was selling for $1,610, including fees. While most tickets were selling for under $4,000, some were far more expensive, including one selling for $52,711, including $11,463 in fees. The site did not show the face value of the tickets for sale.

Region gets economic boost

An agreement between ICC and Nassau County, approved last October, calls for ICC to use 19 acres at Field 6 for the stadium, with practice pitches at Eisenhower and Cantiague Park. ICC will pay for construction and event costs, compensating the county $125,000 for emergency services and Public Works and Parks workers for each game day, a rate Boyle said would “more than cover expenses.”

The county will also take profits from parking and a portion of revenues from sale of branded merchandise, though the percentage has yet to be negotiated, Boyle said. Parking revenues could be substantial: The agreement cites an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 vehicles parking off-site at Eisenhower Park, Nassau Community College and the Nassau Coliseum, with each vehicle paying up to $40 per day.

When the tournament closes, it will leave the county with world-class cricket facilities, Boyle said. The ICC also will give the county 500 match tickets. County officials were planning how to distribute the tickets and will ensure that recipients cannot resell them, Boyle said.

The agreement calls for construction to finish by May 31 and breakdown to finish by July 31. According to a flyer distributed at Eisenhower Park’s administration office, the park will be closed on game days. The park’s Kite Field and several picnic areas will be closed for the spring and summer. Some additional picnic areas will be closed from mid-May through mid-June, according to the flyer.

Organizations that use affected park facilities have been offered other locations or other dates, and “no organization has been shut out,” Boyle said.

Glen Head-based RRDA LI, hired by the county this year for tourism promotion, did not answer emailed questions, but Boyle said the firm was preparing a visitors’ guide that will be distributed to all hotels in the county and partnering with other organizations to stage cricket skills exhibitions this spring.

In a statement, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said “the event will eclipse a Super Bowl in terms of economic activity and exposure to Nassau County. More that 1.2 billion people will watch the featured match of India vs Pakistan which is the type of marketing that money can't buy.”

County officials have said the games will attract moneyed visitors including international business leaders. Some local hotels will fill their rooms during the tournament. Matthew Fisher, director of sales and marketing for the Long Island Marriott, located in Uniondale about two miles from Eisenhower Park, said his staffers were seeing “a flurry of reservations coming in … peaking for the India-Pakistan match,” though no teams will stay at the hotel. “More and more people are booking up the whole week,” he said. 

Ticket distribution frustrates fans

Eric Budish, a University of Chicago economist who studies ticket markets, applauded the ICC for its lottery system. While many tickets on the resale market would be a “telltale sign of broker gaming,” Budish wrote in an email, the number of tickets appearing on StubHub and other sites was modest. It probably indicated “some instances of brokers gaming the lottery or fans realizing they could make a quick buck,” he wrote.

Jones said the ICC “recognizes these markets are legal” and a part of big-time U.S. sports. “Ultimately, it's a demand-driven market,” he said. “Demand is so high, there's always going to be fans of the game who are disappointed.” Besides releasing new tickets, the ICC was working on other opportunities for fans outside of the stadiums, he said. “We want everyone to feel engaged and have a connection to this tournament.”

Eight of nine cricket-loving Long Islanders interviewed this week said they had been unable to get tickets for the coveted India-Pakistan match. One said he hadn’t seen high-level cricket live in this region since 1985. A few said they’d been looking forward to sharing the experience with their sons and daughters. Some said they’d started playing as boys on the other side of the world and still play, decades later, at a handful of amateur pitches around Long Island.

I’d rather give poor people the money to eat than go [to the match] for these crazy numbers. I’ll watch it on TV.

— Shaikh Shakil,  Westbury resident

Shakil started an online petition asking ICC officials to allot tickets to Long Islanders. He said he would refuse on principle to pay the prices resellers were asking. “I’d rather give poor people the money to eat than go [to the match] for these crazy numbers. I’ll watch it on TV.”

Some blamed the ICC or county officials for their predicament.

But Ajith Bhaskar, of Hicksville, president of an area league, the Commonwealth Cricket League and former board director of USA Cricket, said officials had done the best they could in the face of overwhelming demand. “It’s like the Super Bowl … There’s no way you can satisfy 4 million people.”

Trideep Shivraj, a software engineer from Roslyn Heights, will be attending India-Pakistan. He spent about four hours online in early February trying to log onto the ICC ticket website. He paid $2,000 for a package that gives him one ticket to each Nassau match.

Word of his good fortune spread and in recent weeks, “I have friends calling me up from London” asking if he’d be interested in parting with his ticket.

Shivraj said the sky-high resale market did not tempt him. “It has been a rivalry forever," he said. “I would rather go and watch this match.”