ICC chief slammed – by ICC – for ticket fiasco

MUMBAI, (Reuters) – Warring cricket officials, the  shortage of public tickets for India’s high-profile matches and  violent clashes between fans and baton-wielding police took the  spotlight away from the players at the World Cup yesterday.  

On a day when the cricket community should have been hailing  Imran Tahir’s four-wicket haul on his ODI debut and AB de  Villiers’s brilliant century as South Africa thumped West Indies  by seven wickets, the World Cup looked like it was turning into  another public relations disaster for India.
  
The tournament’s top official was severely criticised after  police battered hundreds of fans with bamboo sticks outside  Bangalore’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium as anger at the lack of  tickets for the clash between India and England boiled over.  

In a letter leaked to the media, the governing body of the  sport (ICC) accused its own president Sharad Pawar of  mismanagement and said he was “threaten(ing) to undermine” the  whole tournament with the way tickets were being distributed —  or rather not being distributed — in India. 

Pawar, who is also the chairman of the tournament’s Central  Organising Committee, was under attack for bringing ICC’s  relationship with its corporate sponsors to “breaking point” as  they had yet to receive their allocation of tickets despite  investing millions of dollars into the Feb 19-April 2 event.  

A policeman uses a bamboo stick to move men back into a queue for tickets for the India and England Group B cricket World Cup match at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore yesterday. Thousands of fans who had camped outside the stadium to buy just 4,000 tickets for Sunday's World Cup showdown between India and England clashed with police, local media reported. REUTERS/Philip Brown

In Bangalore, meanwhile, violence erupted after thousands of  fans who had camped outside the 50,000-seat stadium since  Wednesday were told all 7000 tickets allocated for public sale  for Sunday’s India v England game had sold out.  
“The policemen are torturing the people. What the hell is  going on?” an anguished fan called Tony told Reuters TV.  

The severity of the situation did not seem to obviously  register among those responsible for running the sport.   “The biggest challenge we face today is to meet the  expectations of the people, that is not possible, that is never  possible,” former player Javagal Srinath, who is now the  secretary of the Karnataka Cricket Association responsible for  the Bangalore match, told a news conference.  

“There is a limit where we can keep people happy. There is  not much we can do. Around 7,000 tickets were all sold out in  three hours,” a bizarrely grinning Srinath added as he exchanged  jokes with the assembled media.  

MISSED OUT  
However, it was no laughing matter for those fans who had  queued up all night on a dusty lane desperate to get a their  hands on the tickets that are turning out to be more precious  than a Maharajah’s fortune.   After the box office sold its quota of tickets by 1130 local  time (0600 GMT), those who missed out vented their frustration  by hitting out at police, causing damage to the area.
  
The venue was given hosting rights for the  highly-anticipated Group B match after ICC was unhappy with the  preparations at the 100,000-seater Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
  
Ticket sales for the tournament have proven to be a major  headache for organisers, who are unable to meet demand for the  high-profile matches, especially those featuring India as well  as the April 2 final in Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium. 
 
Indian cricket board officials simply shrugged off the  fiasco by saying “these things happen in India” while Pawar  himself stayed silent on the issue all day. 
 
“This is a mess. I just hope the Cricket World Cup doesn’t  bring shame to India like the Commonwealth Games did,” Mumbai  resident Sanjay Goel told Reuters.
  
The October Games received widespread condemnation after  being dogged by organisational problems before the start,  tarnishing India’s image as an emerging financial global force.  

Yesterday’s ugly scenes in Bangalore would have raised  further questions about the way tickets are being distributed in  the cricket-crazy nation. 

Only a small quota for many of the major matches is being  sold directly to the public while the rest are distributed among  the ICC and clubs affiliated to the local cricket associations. 
 
Yesterday’s clashes occurred just two days after the ICC’s  legal head David Becker had warned Pawar in the leaked letter  that tickets for the final should not be sold at the box office  because the high demand created the “potential for chaos and  physical injury when the box office sales open”.  

The 70-year-old Pawar, considered to be the richest  politician in India, is also president of the Mumbai Cricket  Association, which is responsible for the running of the  Wankhede Stadium.  
On Monday, the official online ticket agency that had been  expected to sell 1,000 tickets for the final crashed as 10  million fans tried to log on in just 20 minutes. 
 
Of the 33,000 seats at the Wankhede, around 4,000 are  available to the public — 1,000 via an online ballot while some  3,000 have been earmarked for box office sales.
  
At least on the field, there was nothing to gripe about —  certainly for South African fans.  
Graeme Smith’s men took their first steps towards making it  to the final and they can thank their crushing win over the West  Indies on a Pakistan-born leg-spinner who only switched  allegiance after following his sweetheart back to South Africa.
  
“I was only told yesterday that I would be playing today and  that is the worst thing (that could have happened) because I did  not sleep all night,” grinned the Pakistan-born Tahir.   
“But luckily I had the energy to do well today.”