DEMAND FOR TICKETS for the cricket World Cup semi-finals and final was so high that the official supplier was forced to stop sales before a single ticket had been sold.

The ticket seller Kyazoonga’s website crashed shortly after tickets went on sale on Monday with fans left empty handed and angry, according to Reuters.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) were forced to apologise for the mishap but said that no tickets had been sold in the rush of 10 million people who tried to access the site at one time.

The final is due to be held in Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium in 2 April with 4,000 tickets available to to the public, a thousand of which will be sold online with the other 3,000 available at the stadium box office.

The other 29,000 available tickets have been distributed to the ICC and Mumbai Cricket Association affiliates.

Angry cricket fans stormed the agency’s Facebook page to complain about the crash. One commenter, Nitesh Saxena summed up the feelings of many:

Cricket is religion for millions of people , If you don’t have capability to anticipate …then you should have hired some better than u (sic) who can do this job!!

Kyazoonga was back online  today but without any indication of when the tickets might go on sale again, with an update saying:

And we’re back! All semis and finals tickets that are to go up on sale here are intact. Please stay tuned for further updates.