World Cup final tickets at Lord's will cost up to £395 - the most expensive cricket match in history

A seat at next year’s World Cup final at Lord’s will cost up to £395, the highest ever price for a match in cricket history.

The cheapest seats at the final on July 14 will be £95 for adults, £20 for children. MCC members will have to pay a percentage of the ticket price, with the club agreeing to subsidise part of the cost. 

Ticket prices for other matches will be as low as £20 for adults with some ‘kids for a quid’ prices expected to be released as well. The England & Wales Cricket Board has set the prices for matches after market research and looking at the cost of tournaments in other sports.

The board expects to make around £40m in revenue from sales. There will be around 800,000 tickets for the 46 matches, although ten to 15 percent will go to corporate sponsors of the ICC and other international boards.

It was confirmed on Thursday that the London Stadium will not be one of the host venues despite extensive logistical planning by the ECB. It was eventually ruled out because the ideal pitch location would be hampered by the setting sun.

The best orientation of the pitch would be east to west but the London Stadium has a perspex roof to allow the sun on the grass and after Eoin Morgan and Andrew Strauss shadow batted at the ground it was decided this would be too much of a problem for players.

Rotating the pitch north to south or at a 55-degree angle was also explored but would involve the removal of too many seats, making the cost of turning from a football to cricket playing arena not cost effective.

The ECB had already started growing drop-in pitches to be used at the London Stadium and these could now be given to counties instead. Officials have promised fresh pitches for the semi-finals and final of the World Cup, avoiding the problem England faced at last year’s Champions Trophy when they were beaten by Pakistan on a used surface in Glamorgan. 

The last World Cup in England in 1999 was beset with problems. A farcical opening ceremony was followed by England being knocked out before the team song was released. England have never won the World Cup and were knocked out by Bangladesh in Australia three years ago at yet another disastrous tournament.

“I don’t have a theory why that has happened. I suppose the easy answer is we have always prioritised Test cricket,” said Eoin Morgan, the England one day captain. “The World Cup has always fallen in a year when we have played an Ashes before it. The last World Cup we were not very good. We played the wrong brand of cricket. We could not score 350, did not have options to take wickets with the ball and were out before we started. But we are growing as a team and if we play well between now and the World Cup we will be contenders.”

While the ECB turns away from Twenty20, the rest of the world remains keen to embrace the format. The ICC announced on Thursday that the Champions Trophy 50-over competition, which was last played in England in 2017, will be replaced by the World Twenty20, which will now be played in Australia in 2020 and India in 2021.

Meanwhile, Toby Roland-Jones has been ruled out for the rest of the season with a recurrence of a stress fracture in his back, his second long lay-off in less than a year. Roland-Jones, who took 17 wickets in four Tests for England last summer, had to pull out of the Ashes due to the same injury. He complained of soreness after Middlesex’s match against Derbyshire last week and a scan revealed the full damage.