Former Indian cricket team all-rounder Irfan Pathan had the perfect reply after teammate Yuvraj Singh expressed his doubts about the future of ODI cricket. During the third ODI encounter between India and Sri Lanka on Sunday, Yuvraj was extremely disappointed by the low turnouts at the Greenfield International Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He took to Twitter to express his views and asked his followers whether they feel that ODI cricket is dying with crowd numbers going down.
"... But concern for me half empty stadium? Is one day cricket dying?" Yuvraj wrote on Twitter.
Pathan was quick to react as he said that Yuvraj's return to the field will be enough to attract fans.
"Bhai pads pehan lo. Aajegi jantaaa (Bro wear pads [come back playing], the crowd will come)," he said.
The recently-concluded ODI series saw several one-sided encounters with India winning all three games with absolute ease. On Sunday, Greenfield Stadium saw a huge number of empty seats as official numbers claimed that only 17,000 people turned up at the stadium with a 38,000 capacity.
"We never had a half-empty stadium. There are several reasons. We don't see much interest in ODIs nowadays," Kerala Cricket Association media manager Krishna Prasad told PTI.
"Moreover, the series was done and dusted in Kolkata (with India taking an unassailable 2-0 lead), and with the opponents being Sri Lanka many people chose not to come to the stadium," he added.
Only Eden Gardens saw a crowd of over 50,000 with even Guwahati failing to sell out all the tickets.