The "drastically rescheduled" cricket series between Australia and India has "turned out to be an unexpected triumph in terms of attendances and TV ratings," according to Wayne Smith of THE AUSTRALIAN. Cricketer Phillip Hughes died on Nov. 27, "just one week before the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series was due to get under way." Given the "utterly unprecedented nature of the reschedule," Cricket Australia
officials were not prepared to "speculate at the time on how the massive
disruption would affect attendances and, ultimately, its bottom line,
but privately they braced themselves for the worst." After all, "summer
holiday plans tend to be locked in months in advance, leaving little
flexibility to cope with radical changes." The bottom line "still is
being calculated but attendance and ratings figures for the series have
left CA officials staggered." Both are "dramatically up on the
corresponding figures" from the last four-Test India tour of Australia. This series drew 470,219 spectators, 61,692 more than three years ago. TV audiences for this series "also are dramatically up on the ratings
achieved on the last India tour, averaging 1.329 million viewers per day," compared to 1.275 million three years ago (THE AUSTRALIAN, 1/13).
