The frenzy to get the limited tickets available for the World Cup match between India and England led to chaos outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium counters here on Thursday morning.
Serpentine queues and the resultant frayed tempers soon led to a scuffle and the police had to intervene to chase away irate fans who were desperate to get tickets for Sunday's game.
The Karnataka State Cricket Association was constrained by its commitment to fans in advance who had booked tickets in advance for the game originally slated to be held in Kolkata.
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It was also hamstrung by the quotas given to the ICC and other stakeholders in the game. As a result, the demand for tickets quadrupled. The roads around the venue were strewn with slippers after the morning melee.
Javagal Srinath, secretary, KSCA, said that the rush was expected and added that his association had done the best it could under the circumstances.
“The mad rush was expected. Around 7000 tickets went on sale at the counters and all were sold out within two and half to three hours. For a match of this stature, even if you double or triple the amount of tickets, it will not be enough,” said Srinath.
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Varying demands
Srinath spoke about the varying demands for tickets and said: “This is for the first time that all the State Associations have taken their full quota (25 tickets each) of tickets and it's a BCCI commitment which we have to honour. There are about 4500 members here and we have to give one extra ticket to them. So around 7000 tickets were sold there plus we have some corporate commitment.
“We had to also give tickets to the ICC and that too some prime tickets like the J-Corporate and P2. But we are also thankful that they are sending back some unsold tickets.”
There is room for hope for the fans though as Srinath said that some tickets might be made available online.
“We are getting back some tickets from the ICC and the Cricket Association of Bengal and those will be sold through kyazoonga.com .
“Once they get the final number of tickets, they will sell it online.
“If needed they are also willing to sell those tickets on the day of the match. So all is not lost for the people of Bangalore,” Srinath said.