The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : Sleepless night for cricket fans

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Wednesday, Oct 03, 2007
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

Sleepless night for cricket fans

V.V. Subhrahmanyam

Thousands queue up from Monday night to buy ODI tickets

– Photo: G. Krishnaswamy.

Cricket mania: Police had to intervene to control cricket fans at UCO bank branches in the city where tickets for the 3rd ODI were sold on Tuesday.

HYDERABAD: It was all about passion, fortune and frustration for the die-hard fans who lined up at the four UCO Bank branches in the twin cities on Tuesday to get hold of the 15,000 tickets that were on sale through these counters.

Not surprisingly, there were many who lined up at the banks late Monday night itself and some of them coming from neighbouring districts, all for the sake of getting two tickets (the maximum permissible for each person) to witness the India-Australia one-dayer at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium (Uppal) on October 5.

Herculean task

The fans outnumbered the tickets available, particularly at the Malakpet branch witnessing huge turn-out which led to mild tension as the police had tough time in controlling them. “It is a tough task to get tickets amidst such mad rush,” confessed G. Venkatesh, a businessman and an avid cricket follower.

For a change, the UCO disbursed these tickets almost equally through all the four branches. T.K.Patnaik, AGM (Banjara Hills Branch), informed The Hindu that 3,300 tickets were available at his branch with the break-up being 300 tickets of Rs.5000 each, 1000 of Rs.1000 each and 2000 of Rs.250 each. More or less this was the same in other three branches too, the Bank officials said.

Interestingly, there were long ladies queues and most of them looked to be representing their ‘employers’ who seemed to have found the easy way out to get the tickets and hope for black marketing. “We should have preferred such an option instead of standing in these long queues and going back disappointed,” mulled C.V.H. Murthy, another cricket fan from AFL.

Some of them managed to get tickets through the ‘near and dear’ in the organisation itself.

To keep everything on record, the Bank officials took the signatures or thumb impressions of the buyers besides taking down the telephone numbers if available while noting the ticket numbers issued.

Well, with the crucial phase of tickets sale officially over, the focus shifts to the stadium.

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