Hyderabad: Chaotic scenes at Gymkhana for India-Australia T20 tickets

While booking a ticket online through Paytm Inside website turned out to be a hassle, there is no clarity on the sale of offline tickets yet.

Hyderabad: The city of Hyderabad is set to welcome international cricket after a gap of three years when the city plays hosts to the third T20 between India and Australia on September 25.

With no top-class cricket for the past three years, the fans from the twin cities are eager to get a glimpse of the battle between these top teams. However, their excitement turned into disappointment with troubles in securing a ticket. While booking a ticket online through Paytm Inside website turned out to be a hassle, there is no clarity on the sale of offline tickets yet.

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The scenes at the Gymkhana Ground in Secunderabad on Wednesday present the sorry state of affairs of Hyderabad Cricket Association. Many fans, who have been queuing up at the ground since the last two days for tickets, are lashing out at the association for not providing information. Whoever came to the ground had to return empty-handed.

But what made them furious is the lack of communication from the officials. “I have been trying to buy a ticket since they released it online on September 21. But I could not buy a single one online. The online tickets were not available and now I came here to buy them offline. They said the ticket sale has not yet begun. There is no notice board or anyone here to tell us when they will sell,” rued Kiran, an IT employee.

Prasad, another IT employee who managed to get tickets online, was in the queue to redeem his online ticket. “I bought the tickets after a lot of trouble. I got a message from friends in a whatsapp group saying that we can redeem the ticket at Gymkhana. So, I came here yesterday (Tuesday) and today. But they are yet to give us the tickets. There is no clarity or information on when they will redeem the tickets,” he fumed.

The queue began as early as 6 in the morning at Gymkhana and the crowd kept increasing with each passing hour. Anticipating traffic congestion in the area, the police reached the place to disperse the crowd, who were shouting slogans against the HCA.

Meanwhile, when contacted the HCA officials, they informed that the offline ticket sale will begin on Thursday at Gymkhana and they can also redeem their online tickets at the same venue. “The entire process of ticket sale is being handled by Paytm. We will announce the sale of tickets soon. In all likelihood, the tickets will be sold from Thursday,” he revealed.

The Paytm website, however, displayed information that the tickets will be available soon. “We have almost exhausted the quota for online inventory for September 15. Please stay tuned for further updates. Limited tickets in Lot 2 Coming Soon,” the website says. It also said that the tickets can be redeemed at Gymkhana from September 22 to 25.