I'm an England fan currently on tour in Sri Lanka. I also did the tour of Bangladesh, and I've had plenty of time to discuss the WICB's racist ticket scam with other England supporters. In Bangladesh I only spoke to one person who was intent on buying the rip-off tickets. In Sri Lanka I've spoken to none, and there are far more of us out here than in Bangladesh.
England cricket fans come from all walks of life, and the West Indies was already by far the most expensive tour for us. For most of us, following even the cheaper cricket tours means working long hours for the rest of the year and making big sacrifices in terms of lifestyle when we're at home. It certainly means too, that when we're on tour, we have to travel on a tight budget. I was only going to be able to afford to do Trinidad out of the four Windies Tests, but the ticket rip-off means that I won't now be going. To put the prices into perspective, it is possible to do the entire tour of Sri Lanka (including flights, transport, accommodation, food, drink, and visa extension) for less than the price of the tickets for the 4 WI v England Tests! What's more, if you succeeded in keeping a tight rein, you would even have enough left for tickets to all 5 days of England v New Zealand at Headingly in 2004. New Zealand and Sri Lanka are I believe currently ranked above WI in the ICC Test table, too!
There will undoubtedly be holidaymakers, and those wealthy England fans with more money than sense who will still cough up the cash. These will be the ones travelling with foreign-owned tour groups staying in the big internationally owned hotels, eating in the big internationally owned restaurants, contributing little to locally owned businesses, driving up prices for local people, and generally distorting the economy with their reckless spending. The real losers in this will be the small guesthouse owners, shopkeepers, and the locally owned (and locally priced) restaurants.
It is the real, loyal, dedicated cricket fans with smaller incomes (or simply stronger principles and more self-respect) who will be staying away from this tour. The damage this rip-off is doing to the game of Test cricket as a spectator sport is immeasurable. So is the damage being done to the reputation of the WICB. Expect this PR disaster to increase tenfold if the few hundred England fans expected to travel without tickets aren't allowed in with locally priced ones. The resultant scenes will be broadcast across the world. Many had booked non-refundable flights before the WICB announced their discriminatory policy. These people are extremely angry and in no mood to compromise. If they don't get to watch the cricket, I suspect Carribbean tourism will have to kiss goodbye to these customers forever. I suspect that those thousands of us who are staying away this time will also think very carefully about whether we want to visit a place where it's apparently legal to discriminate against us. Such a policy would almost certainly be against the law in England.
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