Bruised, hurt for love of cricket

HYDERABAD: Thousands of city’s cricket fans, who went to purchase tickets for the Sunday’s match, were left with gruesome experiences which may scar their watching of cricket for a long time. Several of them received lathi blows, others, far more unlucky, landed at an ICU section in a hospital.

Thousands of cricket fans, who were standing in queues even from Wednesday night, as soon as information regarding the sale of tickets was telecasted, never could have imagined how indifferent the Hyderabad Cricket Association members could be to their human dignity and plight.

To make matters worse, it started raining. Many of them had left their businesses or even took half-a-day leave from work to be there. The caning by the police led to a stampede, where hundreds of people were left with bruises and injuries. Those standing in the queue for hours had been chased out by the police officials, and lost their hope to buy a ticket.

Some who resisted and tried to linger back into the queues were threatened by the cops – the prospect of being shoved into a police van and taken to a station. Even women were not spared. Sadhana Kulluri, from Trimulgherry, who took leave from her office after she learnt tickets were on sale, said, “I reached here before 8 am, joined the queue. Around 2 pm, police personnel chased us out.” Sirisha Pallapu, a student, said, “there was no information. We don’t even know what was happening inside the gate of the ticket sales venue, even after several hours of waiting here. We could not even reach the gate when the police chased us out.”

The fans, who last witnessed an international match in the city on December 6, 2019, a T-20 match between India and West Indies, did not want to miss the Indo-Aussie encounter, and had clearly not bargained the ordeal the HCA put them through. Their criminal negligence meant the fans lost the match even before the actual game began.