KARACHI, 9 March 2004 — Tickets for the opening match of the first Indian cricket tour of Pakistan in more than 14 years sold like hot cakes yesterday, a day after fans and police clashed after sales opened.
Authorities at Karachi’s National Cricket Stadium, where the first of five one-day matches will take place on Saturday, opened extra counters to cope with the thousands of cricket-lovers queuing for a second consecutive day.
Some 20,000 tickets are now being sold by eight booths at the stadium and at several other grounds in Pakistan’s largest city.
“Sales have shaped up smoothly after we increased the number of outlets for the tickets,” Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chief Executive Ramiz Raja told AFP.
“We have now put on sales of low-priced tickets at 100 rupees (about two dollars) each at five different grounds to distribute the load.”
On Sunday dozens of people, frustrated that only three counters were selling tickets, pelted police with stones, triggering baton charges by security forces.
Several people were injured in the mayhem but none was seriously hurt.
But things went smoothly when booths reopened on Monday morning and it took just a few hours for more than 21,000 tickets to be snatched up.
“Everything has gone well today,” Zakir Khan, the Pakistan Cricket Board’s general manager for cricket operations, told Reuters.
“We sold tickets from five other spots in the city apart from the booths at the stadium and that helped.” One of the ticket sellers said demand was so high that “latecomers will not get tickets.”
The National Stadium has a capacity of 33,000. Around 20 percent of tickets have already been sold through the Internet.
