The New Indian Express First Published : 28 Feb 2011 10:54:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 27 Feb 2011 11:11:59 PM IST
Thousands of tickets have been reserved for various cricket associations, club members, channel partners, sponsors, VIPs and government departments ostensibly due to ‘official commitments’. The ticketing website has crashed. People who booked online six months ago are still waiting to receive tickets. In this, the most cricket-crazy country on the planet, currently co-hosting the game’s showpiece tournament, tickets for the common man are in such scarce supply that the International Cricket Council (ICC) has delivered a warning to its own president, Sharad Pawar, who is also chairman of the World Cup Organising Committee.
The situation is disappointingly reminiscent of 2010 Commonwealth Games fiasco wherein, apart from other irregularities, heaps of unsold tickets were traced to garbage dumps even as fans were turned back by sold-out signs at counters. Now, after the police lathicharge and injuries the common man has had to bear for his honest attempt at securing tickets, should there be empty seats at stadia — and there is a distinct possibility of that happening, what with the interest of sundry pass-holders in investing time and effort to watch matches being questionable — the organisers will have much to answer for. How farcical the situation is can be gauged from this: for the final, there are only 4,000 tickets for the public, 1,000 of which will be sold via an online lottery with seats costing as much as Rs 18,750 each. Officials and those on whom they seek to bestow favours have ten times as many tickets. Free. No queues, no lathicharge, no tension.
That there is no ceiling on the number of tickets placed at the discretion of association presidents and secretaries remains a matter of convenience for cricket administrators and fans, the commercial backbone of the game. To put an end to this humiliation, officials must necessarily surrender their ticket quota and, if at all compulsions as host require that this privilege be extended to sponsors and certain patrons, the tickets so issued must be limited and priced significantly above the counter rate.
Clearly, the buck stops not only with the Board of Control for Cricket in India and its affiliated units for stretching unfair practices too far, but also with the ICC as the event is being staged under its supervision. The World Cup is the perfect time for administrators to realise that there is no such thing as a free meal. Or a free ticket.
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