A new Australian record was set for crowd attendance last night, with 93,013 people attending the match. That broke the existing record of 91,112, which was set on the Boxing Day of the 2013 Ashes series.

– #Quiz360: WIN a group paintball session at Zayed Sports City
– Clarke sees Australia to fifth Cricket World Cup win as Kiwis crumble

All eyes were on Indian fans and how they reacted after their team’s loss in the semi-finals. Although not confirmed by the ICC, it is believed almost 20,000 tickets for the final had already been purchased by Indian fans before the match in Sydney.

As it turned out, most of the Indians made it to the stadium, much to the relief of the organisers. And most of them were backing Brendon McCullum’s team and seen purchasing New Zealand flags and T-shirts.

But there were many who were standing in front of the box office yesterday, trying to sell off their tickets.

An American-Indian couple, who travelled all the way from Rose Valley in California and were staying in my hotel, had tickets for the finals, but instead wanted to use the three days they had in Melbourne for sight-seeing. They were planning to give away their tickets for free.

On Saturday, single tickets were selling for anywhere in the range of AUD200-500 (Dh570-1420) on Gumtree, an Australian site for community listings and ads.

Merchandise in demand

The official Merchandise Shops – there were four of them around the stadium – did rip-roaring business, as expected. Each of them had massive queues in front of them.

The hottest selling item was the Australian team T-shirt, valued at AUD120 (Dh341), and yet, surprisingly, the first item that seemed to have run out of stock was the all black variety worn by their opposition.

This was followed by the key chains that came attached to a mini World Cup trophy and priced at AUD10 (Dh28.5). Also a hot-seller was the team caps of both the finalists (AUD25, Dh71).

Obviously, one of the stall attendants informed me their largest inventory was of the Aussie shirt. The stall also displayed and sold Indian team shirt (no other teams had that honour), and they were still moving out pretty fast despite the team’s failure to make it to the final.

The T-shirts ranged from AUD20 (Dh57) for collarless to AUD120 for the team T-shirts.