Ah, That Caribbean Atmosphere Well, it's been decidedly lacking through this World Cup, can you imagine England playing Argentina in a two thirds empty stadium in the football world cup ? It wouldn't happen. In the poorly run cricket world cup though this is exactly what we have seen happining, the giants of the game playing each other in front of crowds the size of which are more common in Sunday league games. Faisal Hasnain, the ICC's chief financial officer has said that there is so much money rolling into the ICC coffers that they barely know what to do with it. In that case, why on earth have the ticket prices been set so high that the local in the Windies can't afford to watch the games ? The atmosphere at almost every match so far has been pretty flat and this is both a shame and an embarassment for the game and its organisers. Even though the ICC could have done something about the crowds (reduce ticket prices, let school children in free etc) when the problem became apparent early on in the competition, they have chosen to do nothing, except a bit of hand wringing and blame shifting. ""We had to rely on the advice of the local organising committee to establish the prices of the tickets. It is, in retrospect, a little too rich for the local palate," said Malcolm Speed, Chief Executive Officer of the ICC. The organisers knew well before the World Cup started that ticket sales had been dreadful, but they did nothing, and Malcolm Speed's attempt to blame someone else is pathetic, Mr. Speed, you're the boss, the buck stops with you. I've been dissapointed watching the World Cup on telly, it's much more fun with the crowd buzzing, yelling and cheering, and to be fair, the few hundred people that have attended each match have done their best, but it's hard for a quarter crowd to make enough noise to fill a whole stadium. Which leads on to the stadiums, whether or not they've been built with Chinese money in an obscure attempt to embarass Taiwan (does anyone understand why these two non-entities of cricket are involved in sponsorship ?). What on earth are the Windies going to do with all these big new/rebuilt stadia, if they can't fill them for a World Cup then what can they fill them for ? A Bob Marley tribute concert ? A Windies cricket fundraising barbeque ? Let's hope that the World Cup Final is played before a full house, or even in a finished stadium, for all of us cricket lovers the world over, we couldn't have a worse advert for the game than empty seats for the last match.