Hyderabad: Tickets for the Indian Premier League final to be played at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on May 12 were sold out in a matter of minutes on Tuesday.
According to the authorities, the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) is in control of the match, while the Hyderabad Cricket Association assists it. The organisers handed over the bookings to a private company called Events Now but made no earlier announcement of the time and date to book online. On Tuesday, when the announcement was made through a flyer stating, ‘Tickets go live today at 2 pm’, in less than two minutes the site showed that the match was sold out.
Phani Shankar, who tried to buy a ticket, told Deccan Chronicle, “I logged in at 14:01 hrs on to Events Now and tried to select some seats. By the time I selected the South pavilion west 1st floor all the seats were booked and in a couple of minutes, all the tickets were finished. I tried the west and east stands (`2,500) but those too were fully booked. I checked with friends and they also had similar experiences.” When the site https://www.eventsnow.com/events/12021-ipl-2019-final was checked multiple times, tickets costing `1,500, `2,000, `2,500 and `5,000 were all sold out.
A highly placed source told this newspaper, “The tickets manifesto is prepared by the government council; no information is shared with the TS Cricket Association. In all the IPL matches, a small share of tickets is given to HCA members, while the lion’s share is held by the BCCI. It is the responsibility of the BCCI to inform the public about tickets. The very purpose of the Lodha Committee was accountability and transparency. There was no announcement made, no statement issued to the press, no deals of ticket as per denomination, which is a mandatory requirement.
Unfortunately, no one knows how many tickets were given to Events Now.”
The capacity of the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium is around 39,000 seats, which includes the terrace, east and west stands, and VIP enclosures. Insiders in the Hyderabad Cricket Association say that a major chunk of tickets for the seven games that have been played at the RGICS have been usurped by the police and bureaucrats. Some put the number at 4,000.
It is also alleged that policemen manning the gates are letting family members of their colleagues in without valid tickets. It may not be out of place to mention that last year, Mayor Bonthu Ram Mohan's followers had broken open the locks on an inner gate and barged into the stadium when they did not have tickets and so were refused entry.
