Australia v South Africa 2014: Cricket Australia to investigate poor MCG crowd There were plenty of empty seats for Friday's one-dayer at the MCG. CRICKET Australia chief executive James Sutherland says there will be an investigation into why crowd numbers have been so poor for the one-day series against World Cup contenders South Africa. Only a few thousand fans were inside the MCG when play started on Friday afternoon, despite the quality of the weather and the fact a highly-anticipated series was going on the line. The official crowd figure was 14,177, significantly less than the 23,740 who attended the Melbourne Victory v Brisbane Roar A-League match just around the corner at Etihad Stadium. For the third one-dayer in Canberra a sold out crowd provided great atmosphere at Manuka Oval, but for the first two matches in Perth the attendances were dismal, with just 9,322 and 10,956 turning up at the WACA. Sutherland defended the disappointing turnouts at Adelaide Oval, the MCG and ANZ Stadium for the Twenty20 component of the South African visit - pointing to the massive television audiences that tuned in. Again for the ODI matches, the TV numbers have averaged 1.3m. But despite the historic difficulties of attracting crowds to cricket matches in November, Sutherland admitted the MCG crowd was unacceptable. "It's not a good crowd and it's not something that we're terribly happy about, we need to understand a little bit more (about why)," said Sutherland. If AB de Villiers plays a shot and nobody's there to see it, does it really happen? I think it's fine to say it's an unconventional time of year for us to be playing but at the same time there's a lot more to it and we'll do our own assessments to understand that ... I'd like to think we can do better. But I also know we've got a huge summer of cricket coming on. We know at the MCG for example we've literally sold already hundreds of thousands of tickets to matches to be played from Boxing Day onwards so there's a silver lining to that to some extent but we would have hoped for a few more on what (was) a pretty nice Melbourne day. Sutherland denied ticket prices were too high, with seats being sold for as low as $35 and group deals available. 3rd ODI at Manuka Oval, Canberra: 10, 583 2nd ODI at WACA Ground, Perth: 10,956 1st ODI at WACA Ground, Perth: 9,322 3rd T20 at ANZ Stadium, Sydney: 24,187 2nd T20 at MCG, Melbourne: 21,415 1st T20 at Adelaide Oval, Adelaide: 26,370 Originally published as Officials baffled by tiny MCG crowd