ST JOHN’S, An­tigua – Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) has re­port­ed al­most sold out tick­ets for the up­com­ing two T20 In­ter­na­tion­als be­tween West In­dies and In­dia, which will be played in the USA.

The two MyTeam11 Twen­ty20 In­ter­na­tion­als be­tween the sides will be played on Au­gust 3 and 4 at the Broward Coun­ty Sta­di­um in the Amer­i­can city of Lauder­hill, lo­cat­ed in Flori­da.

Crick­et West In­dies tick­et so­lu­tions provider, Zoon­ga, re­port­ed record gross tick­et sales for a sin­gle West In­dies match over a 24-hour, on­line sales pe­ri­od.

Tick­ets for the In­dia Tour of the West In­dies 2019 – spon­sored by MyTeam11 and co-pow­ered by Sko­da – went on sale to the pub­lic last Mon­day.

“Near­ly all of our pre­mi­um seats and mound ac­cess seats have been sold with over 8,000 tick­ets sold across the two T20Is in just over 24 hours,” said CWI com­mer­cial di­rec­tor Do­minic Warne.

“Such has been the de­mand that we’re re­leas­ing al­most an­oth­er 5,000 tick­ets for each day’s play, with 4,600 ad­di­tion­al cov­ered and un­cov­ered bleach­er seats on sale to­day. We’ve al­so ex­tend­ed the mounds area to fit in an­oth­er 300 places. Fans will con­tin­ue to have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to buy a dou­ble-head­er bun­dle for the two match­es at a 10 per cent dis­count to in­di­vid­ual day tick­ets.”

<Roach: Ear­ly slipups cost us semis spot>

Mean­while, West In­dies fast bowler Ke­mar Roach be­lieves cru­cial loss­es to Aus­tralia and New Zealand de­railed the West In­dies’ chances of ad­vanc­ing to the 2019 ICC World Cup semi­fi­nals.

He made the com­ments fol­low­ing the re­gion­al side’s de­feat to In­dia on Thurs­day in Man­ches­ter, Eng­land, which of­fi­cial­ly elim­i­nat­ed them from ad­vanc­ing to the knock­out round.

Roach, who will cel­e­brate his 31st birth­day on Sun­day, said af­ter the Windies’ open­ing vic­to­ry over Pak­istan, those loss­es stymied their mo­men­tum.

“I think, ob­vi­ous­ly af­ter the first in­nings against Pak­istan, the guys were con­fi­dent go­ing for­ward in­to the World Cup. I think a cou­ple of close games be­tween Aus­tralia and then a cou­ple of oth­er teams, New Zealand, I think it’s tough be­cause you want to get over the line, ob­vi­ous­ly, and get some con­fi­dence go­ing for­ward but it didn’t work out for us.

“But I think the guys, you know, keep­ing our heads up. We’re out now, but ob­vi­ous­ly there’s a fu­ture for us. I think we’re still learn­ing. [They’re a] cou­ple of young guys on the team that have a great fu­ture for them and it’s all about be­ing pos­i­tive and look­ing for­ward,” Roach said.

De­spite the West In­dies’ sub-par per­for­mance in the com­pe­ti­tion, Roach said there was still a bright fu­ture ahead for the team, es­pe­cial­ly the young play­ers.

He point­ed to promis­ing play­ers Os­hane Thomas and Shim­ron Het­my­er, who he said had much to of­fer.

“Yeah, I think we have a bright fu­ture. We have some qual­i­ty play­ers around. Het­my­er and Os­hane, the younger guys, once they get some good guid­ance, they’ll do well for West In­dies. And I’m con­fi­dent in the guys. I’ll al­ways be a fan of West In­dies crick­et for sure, there’s no doubt about it,” Roach said.

“Yeah, as I said, it’s all a good fu­ture for us. They’re a cou­ple of guys back home do­ing well as well, so hope­ful­ly we’ll see these guys fil­ter in­to the West In­dies team in the near fu­ture.”

(CMC)