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Pawar slammed after fans clash with police over tickets
Source: Agencies |
February 25, 2011, Friday
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THE Cricket World Cup's top official was severely criticized yesterday after police battered hundreds of fans with bamboo sticks outside a stadium in Bangalore as anger at the lack of tickets for the clash between India and England boiled over.
In a memo, 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 Organizing 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 February 19-April 2 event.
In Bangalore, 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 for Sunday's India vs England game had sold out.
"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, said. "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 joked with the media.
The ugly scenes 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.
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 Stadium in Mumbai, 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.
In a memo, 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 Organizing 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 February 19-April 2 event.
In Bangalore, 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 for Sunday's India vs England game had sold out.
"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, said. "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 joked with the media.
The ugly scenes 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.
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 Stadium in Mumbai, 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.
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