NEW DELHI: Cricket fans booked on an Air India flight to catch Sunday’s India-Pakistan World Cup match were left in the lurch after cabin shortage kept the Dreamliner at IGI Airport some eight hours past departure time. Violent clashes broke out as it became clear that the flight, set to reach Sydney at 6.40am (Australia time), ahead of the 2pm match, would not make it.Air India is the only airline, Indian or foreign, to operate a direct flight from India to Australia and cricket fans on way to Adelaide made up the bulk of the flyers on Saturday’s 12-hour flight.Air India's AI 302 was to take off for Sydney and Melbourne with 252 passengers at 1pm (India time) on Saturday. A crippling cabin crew shortage kept flight grounded till 9pm. While an AI spokesman said the flight may take off by 9.30pm, airline sources said crew was unlikely to be found for the flight before midnight.While an Air India spokesman hoped “the flight will take off in time and passengers be able to reach Australia in time for the match”, there was little chance of them getting to Sydney in time and catching a connecting flight to Adelaide. As the hours passed, passengers got into heated arguments and fisticuffs with the airline staff.“Crew supposed to operate AI's other flights were asked by security to take some other route to reach their aircraft so that they could avoid being manhandled by the angry Australia passengers,” an airport source said. But that wasn’t easy as all AI international flights were operating from the same pier, B Bay of Terminal 3.Personnel from CISF, the agency in charge of security at airports, had to be called in to pacify the flyers, airport sources said. The Dreamliner on this route has a seating capacity of 256 and Saturday’s flight had 252 passengers (14 business and 238 economy), an almost full load due to the big Sunday match.The Australia flight wasn’t the only one delayed, though. AI admitted that its Delhi-Kolkata flight (021), which was to depart at 3pm, took off at 7.30pm. The Delhi-Dubai (AI 971) flight was also delayed for the same reason, the airline said.AI's on-time performance has hit such a low that aviation secretary V Somasundaran has been forced to monitor the situation on a daily basis. He had last month asked the airline to immediately hire 800 cabin crew members. AI currently has 3,000 cabin crew, mostly airhostesses.The airline CMD's three-year term ended last year but with the government unable to find a successor, the airline is virtually running on auto-pilot.