A Smashing Summer Coming Up

The Cricket World Cup starts this week in England, with 48 matches planned over the next six weeks with the home nation hot favourites before a ball has been bowled or a drop of rain fallen. Regarded by many as a slightly odd game where a drawn match can take five days, the format is for a faster and hopefully more exciting 50 overs per side with pinch hitters seeking to avoids slips and ladies looking for fine leg.

2019 is a big year for major sporting events with both Cricket and Rugby Union hosting their global tournaments in the United Kingdom and Japan respectively, but a key question is do they really bring inbound tourism and do airlines add more capacity to their networks to accommodate that demand?

We’ve taken a quick look at those countries competing in the cricket this summer and the direct services to the United Kingdom. This excludes Australia and New Zealand which have no direct flights but - as English cricket fans would say - “does that really matter?”. The table below highlights exactly what has changed, and we’ve put a bit of spin on those numbers.

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