Wellington farewells the Cricket World Cup

A near capacity crowd has enjoyed a spectacular game of cricket at Wellington Regional Stadium (Westpac Stadium) on Saturday night (21st March) as New Zealand beat the West Indies this evening in the last of the quarter final games.

With no arrests and only 14 people evicted over the course of the match, Police Operation Commander for the event, Inspector Brett Amas says that’s a great result thanks to a well behaved crowd.

Amas stated “it was a great game on the field, the crowd was positive and focussed on enjoying the cricket, which created a fantastic atmosphere.”

Looking back on the event, Inspector Amas stated “Wellington Police have enjoyed being part of the ICC Cricket World Cup, which has run very smoothly from our perspective and is a credit to Wellington Regional Stadium and the ICC Cricket World Cup organisers.”

Meanwhile, information released by Statistics New Zealand shows that the city of Napier has the distinction of being New Zealand’s top and bottom cricket watching area after the pool rounds of the Cricket World Cup.

Through the first weeks of the Cricket World Cup, Statistics NZ has been looking at crowd numbers and then calculating them as a percentage of the local population.

Napier’s game between the West Indies and the United Arab Emirates on Sunday 15th March was attended by 1,221 people.

Compared to the estimated 132,129 people living within 50 kilometres of McLean Park, that means just under 1%  of the population was represented at the ground, the lowest of any of the games in New Zealand.

But with 10,022 people at Napier’s big game between New Zealand and Afghanistan on 8th March, McLean Park is top of the table with 7.59% of the population, just ahead of the New Zealand-England game in Wellington on 20th February, where 30,148 people attended, equivalent to 7.14% of the local population.

The common factor in the two top-of-the-table games is New Zealand playing, with Nelson’s game between the West Indies and Ireland on 16th February being the best attended game not featuring the Black Caps.

For more information, click here to view Statistics New Zealand's chart showing the biggest crowds relative to local populations.

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