ONE of the issues that has completely ruined the Cricket World Cup as a spectacle for me is the unwelcome sight of near empty grandstands all over the Caribbean.

The lack of big crowds attending matches at the sport's showpiece occasion for the first time in the competition's 32-year history is nothing short of a joke.

Let's be honest, International Cricket Council members should collectively hang their heads in shame for their disgraceful decision to all but force the West Indies organisers to concentrate on selling tickets to tourists rather than locals.

We all know that most supporters of England, Australia, New Zealand and the other major cricket playing nations can afford to pay the hyped-up ticket prices while combining their trip with a holiday in the sun.

But there is an awful lot of poverty on some of the islands that make up the West Indies, which, unfortunately, I witnessed first hand while in Trinidad three years ago.

Because of that, the ICC must be condemned for failing to lower their ticket prices for the islanders from St Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Barbados and St Lucia and also those on mainland Guyana.

Part of the appeal of staging a World Cup or Olympic Games these days is the special atmosphere and pride it can instil among the locals while the competition is being held in their country.

You only have to go back to Sydney 2000 and the 2002 football World Cup in Japan and South Korea to see that.

So to charge the people of the Caribbean a week's wages to watch Canada versus Kenya in a dead rubber on St Lucia is quite simply a farce.

It is a controversial decision that has back-fired big time on cricket bosses around the world.

West Indians love their cricket. All of them, if my visit to watch England on tour at Port of Spain in 2004 is anything to go by.

So it is dreadful that most of them have been forced to miss out on taking a full part in the first major global sporting event held on their doorstep.

What makes it even worse is that the ICC's big chunk of live television money could easily have subsidised cheaper tickets for the locals.

That's why I have to laugh when Sky Sports continually show their stupid little advert between breaks in play that tells us 'life is a carnival'.

I have to laugh because if I didn't I really would get angry because 'life' quite patently isn't 'a carnival' for those luckless thousands of Caribbeans who can't afford to get into a match.

What's just as sad is that if you live in the West Indies and you don't have satellite, then the local television coverage of the cricket can be pretty shaky.

So that would leave you stumped from even enjoying watching the World Cup in your own home!

The ICC have missed a trick, and I wince every time I turn on the television to watch Sky's glorious coverage and see all those empty seats.

It seems, however, that the organisers have finally got their act together, albeit very late in the day.

They've just reduced ticket prices as the World Cup gets down to the business end.

And I hope the people of Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica and St Lucia grab their unexpected opportunity to turn up in their droves to the remaining matches.

Sadly, even if the do, my memories of the 2007 Cricket World Cup are always going to be soured by those needless big gaps in the crowds when all it needed was a bit of common sense over the initial ticket pricing for locals.