Hyderabad Cricket Association not involved in ticket fiasco: Azharuddin

Speaking to media on the arrangement made for the upcoming match, the former Indian cricketer said, “We have given the contract to a third party and they are handling it

Hyderabad: When everyone is blaming the Hyderabad Cricket Association for the India-Australia third T20 fiasco that led to the stampede-like situation at Gymkhana resulting in injuries to a few fans on Thursday, the association president Mohd Azharuddin said that they are not at all involved in the sale of tickets.

Speaking to media on the arrangement made for the upcoming match, the former Indian cricketer said, “We have given the contract to a third party and they are handling it. How are we in the picture? Is there a chance we are involved in any of this? What happened yesterday was a sad thing. But how can you blame it on us?” he said.

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There were several allegations on the association for mishandling ticket sales and making money by selling tickets in black. But Azhar said it is not possible for them to do that. “When the ticket sale is all online, apart from a few tickets offline, how can we be involved? There is a police force and they will handle the issue. When someone buys a ticket offline or online, what he does with it afterwards is not in our hands. We are not bothered what they do with them. If they sell it in black police will take action. There are a few things which are beyond our control,” he said.

When asked why HCA is cagey about the number of tickets available online and offline, he said, “11,450 tickets were sold online on September 15 while 4,000 corporate box tickets were sold later. Around 3,000 tickets were put on sale offline and 2,100 tickets were sold online again on Thursday. Around 6,000 tickets are being given to the stakeholders and internal partners of the association,” he revealed.

While the stadium capacity is close to 55,000, around 39,000 tickets should be made available to the public, which was not the case.

Meanwhile, secretary R Vijayanand said, “Though we have differences in the association, we came together to conduct the match smoothly. When the ticket sale is given to a third party, they will take care of everything. We are working in tandem with the government to make the match a success,” he said.

When asked about the police cases booked against the HCA officials, he said Paytm is the official partner to sell tickets and he blamed them for the fiasco. Azhar also blamed the ground conditions on Covid. “See, there were no matches for the past three years because of Covid-19 and we lost a lot of revenue due to the lack of an IPL. That revenue would have been used for maintaining the ground. But we maintained the ground well and cleaned it. We made it ready for the match and will conduct the match smoothly,” he said.