Storm clouds were gathering Thursday over cricket’s World Twenty20, with organizers still to release tickets or confirm the venues, less than a month before the tournament begins in India.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters are expected to attend the 16-team contest which begins on March 8, the first time India has hosted the world cup for the game’s newest and most popular format.

But with question marks over the presence of the West Indies and New Delhi yet to receive clearance to host matches, fans who need to secure flights, hotels and even visas are still unable to firm up travel plans.

The official line from the Indian board is that any glitches will be ironed out and there is no cause for alarm. “Everything will be sorted out very soon,” Anurag Thakur, secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), told AFP.

But Paul Ford, co-founder of New Zealand’s Beige Brigade fan club, said it was now simply too late for some fans.

“We would have loved to travel to India as New Zealand have a good team this time round,” Ford told AFP.

“But the delay in ticket sales and the venue being undecided has really made it hard for the fans to plan their travel.” 

Tickets for other major sporting events in 2016 such as the Rio Olympics in August and football’s European Championships which take place in France in June went on sale months ago.

Thakur told reporters last Friday that tickets would be released at the start of this week, a month before the first matches involving the tournament’s minnows. But that deadline came and went and organizers have set next Monday as their new target, a month before India play New Zealand in the first heavyweight clash.

The delay can be explained in part by the uncertainty over whether New Delhi’s Firoz Shah Kotla stadium will receive all the permits needed to stage its four matches — including the first semi-final.

While the Delhi High Court indicated on Monday it was likely to give its green light, it also left open the possibility that it would not make a final decision for nearly another three weeks.

“Twenty days is the maximum time given, we will get things in order in 10 days,” Chetan Chauhan, vice-president of the Delhi and District Cricket Association, told AFP.

“We have already told the BCCI to start the ticket sales. We have told them that we are absolutely fit to host the matches with all the approvals in place.”

Mystery ‘Plan B’

Nevertheless, the BCCI says it has drawn up a Plan B without revealing which venues might step in.

But the problems have evoked unfortunate memories of the ODI World Cup in 2011 when Kolkata lost its right to host matches after furious fans had already paid for their flights from England.

Veteran sports writer Ayaz Memon said the uncertainty over whether India’s capital was fit to stage matches was “agonizing”.

“If Delhi loses its World Cup games then it is a big blow to the BCCI and a setback to the cricket administration in India… and that is not acceptable,” Memon told AFP.

Another crisis is brewing in the Caribbean where a pay dispute shows little sign of being resolved before a February 14 deadline for players to sign contracts drawn up by the West Indies board. While it appears unlikely the West Indies will boycott the event, its credibility would take a major hit if stars such as Chris Gayle stay at home and are replaced by second-stringers.

The 2009 winners Pakistan have also voiced concerns about security in India while stopping short of threatening a boycott.

The South Asian arch rivals have not played a bilateral series for more than three years amid diplomatic tensions but they are due to play each other on March 19 in the Himalayan town of Dharamsala. Thakur said it was ultimately up to Pakistan whether they decided to come to India.

Memon acknowledged the delay to ticket sales was unhelpful but added that it would be unfair to lay all the blame at the door of the Indian board as it was an International Cricket Council (ICC) event. No one from the ICC was available for comment when contacted by AFP.

“As far as the tournament is concerned, I hope that West Indies don’t send a third-string team,” said Memon.

“And I also hope that Pakistan don’t skip the event because that will take away the sheen from a world tournament.”

Twitter’s woes deepened Wednesday as the struggling messaging platform said it failed to add users in the past quarter, adding to concerns it is lagging in the fast-moving world of social networks.

The San Francisco group said its base of monthly active users was 320 million at the end of last year, unchanged from the previous quarter. And excluding those who follow Twitter using text messaging, the user base declined slightly to 305 million from 307 million in the previous quarter.

Twitter, which has never earned a profit, said its loss in the past quarter narrowed to $90.2 million from $125 million a year earlier, but the market was focused more on its user growth.

Twitter shares dropped more than 3 percent in after-market trades that followed release of the report, extending a steep decline that has eroded some 75 percent of its value from peak levels.

The latest report showed revenue climbed 48 percent to $710 million in the quarter when compared to the same period a year earlier. Twitter revenue for the full year was up 58 percent to $2.2 billion.

Twitter has been under pressure to prove it can expand beyond its fierce following to be a mainstream society hit. But its outlook for the current quarter failed to allay concerns, with revenue growth below most forecasts.

The company projected revenue of $595 million to $629 million, below most forecasts of $629 million. A letter to shareholders said 2015 was a “very strong year,” citing “significant progress” boosting advertising.

The letter said the reorganization, which brought a new leadership team led by co-founder Jack Dorsey, was poised “to move with greater agility and focus” as Twitter seeks to revive its fortunes.

Tweaking the timeline

Twitter announced earlier Wednesday it was revamping its timeline, allowing the “best” tweets to rise to the top, despite warnings of a revolt from members loyal to the real-time flow of the messaging platform.

The latest tweak was aimed at injecting new life into the one-to-many messaging service by moving away from a pure chronological timeline to one determined by algorithm, as used by social network leader Facebook.

Twitter said the “Show me the best tweets first” feature is optional and that users can stick with tweets rushing by like leaves on a fast-moving river, if they prefer. The algorithm was built on a “while you were away” feature that Twitter introduced about a year ago to show people notable posts they missed while not using the service.

“We have applied a lot of the same algorithms to it,” Dorsey said while discussing the new feature on an earnings call.

“This gives the tweeter a super power, because they don’t have to tweet multiple times to get their message across.”

The new feature is being introduced as Twitter strives to expand its ranks of users and ramp up the amount of time people spend at the service.

But reports of the timeline shift have already prompted protests from some users who say it may lead to the death of the platform, tweeting with the hashtag #RIPTwitter. Dorsey said that Twitter use “bounced back” in January and that the company was confident it could keep the trend going.

Twitter was expecting spikes in use focused on major events such as the Olympics and the US presidential election, and intent on getting new users to stick with the service.

Eyes on live video

Twitter’s leadership team gathered last month and mapped out a plan for this year. “We’re focused now on what Twitter does best: live,” Dorsey said.

“Twitter has always been considered a second screen for what’s happening in the world, and we believe we can become the first screen for everything that’s happening now.”

Twitter priorities for this year include making it more intuitive to use the service; being a leader in live-streaming video, and making it safer for people to freely express themselves at the platform, according to Dorsey.

He assured analysts that he had a system in place to make sure that both companies he runs, Twitter and mobile payments firm Square, get the attention they deserve.

Dorsey declined to detail what other tweaks might be in store for the service, but said there are a “number of broken windows” that needed to be fixed to boost user growth.

Earlier this month, one report said venture capital powerhouse Marc Andreessen and the firm Silver Lake Partners is considering a deal, perhaps to acquire or take a controlling stake in Twitter.

Twitter has been the target of takeover talk in the past, but none of the rumors played out. The latest report came fresh on the heels of the firm announcing it is overhauling its top management in a major shakeup.