Hyderabad: Ambiguity over Ind-Aus tickets sale leads to confusion

While tickets in the first slot were sold like hot cakes within half an hour on September 15, there is no clarity on the second slot of tickets yet.

Hyderabad: The return of international cricket to Hyderabad after a gap of three years brought cheers to the fans in the twin cities. But in no time, the cheer turned into disappointment soon once the sale of the tickets began on September 15.

While tickets in the first slot were sold like hot cakes within half an hour on September 15, there is no clarity on the second slot of tickets yet. However, the offline sale of tickets at Gymkhana turned out to be a disaster with fans and police involved in stampede, resulting in lathi-charge that left several injured and hospitalized.

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The India vs Australia third T20 scheduled to be held on September 25 is the only third T20 at the venue. The Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, which was earlier named as Visakha International Cricket Stadium, has so far hosted five Tests, six ODIs. Though the stadium has a capacity of 55,000, only over 39,000 seats were made available for the viewing.

Out of these, around 33,000 tickets would be put on sale every time a match is scheduled here. However, around this time, under the leadership of former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin, there is no clarity on how many tickets are being sold to the public. While there used to be multiple counters – at Gymkhana and Uppal Stadium – to obtain tickets for the general public, this time, the HCA decided to open only one counter at Gymkhana, which led to the chaos.

The officials are cagey in divulging the information as well. Unlike in the past, there is no communication on the number of tickets for offline sale nor the breakup of the prices. There were no communications on ticket sale offline till late Wednesday night. After chaotic scenes at Gymkhana, the HCA top brass decided to open only one counter at Gymkhana on Thursday morning to sell tickets from 10 am to 7 pm.

Any fan, who wants to enter the stadium, needs a physical ticket. Though one bought a ticket online, he has to redeem at Gymkhana before going to Uppal stadium. Thus, the people wanting to buy offline tickets and the others who want to redeem their online tickets thronged the stadium, leading to chaos.

The fans who gathered at Gymkhana on Thursday also criticised HCA for not putting all tickets on sale. While a few complained of getting tickets of denominations of Rs 850 and Rs 1200, others rued that only around 3,000 tickets were put in the two counters. Even club secretaries of HCA revealed that they are yet to get their allotted complimentary passes.