CHENNAI: The new BCCI under Sourav Ganguly has gone back to some of the practices regarding distribution of tickets for international matches, which were discontinued by the Committee of Administrators (CoA). It has also reinstated the match observer for these fixtures, a position that was done away with by the panel headed by Vinod Rai.
Before the CoA took charge of the BCCI, the board president, secretary and sponsors were given complimentary tickets to hospitality seats. While implementing the Lodha commission recommendation that 90 per cent of tickets at every venue has to be made available for the public, the CoA during its 33-month reign had scrapped the practice.
The Ganguly-led BCCI has decided to revive the tradition of distributing these tickets. Following this, the BCCI president and secretary will receive 50 tickets each at every venue in every international match. Usually, these are for government officials, VIPs and others that the BCCI officials like to oblige. The sponsors will be given 25. All these are premium seats in hospitality areas.
“The BCCI president and secretary have a right to invite people they want to because of the positions they hold. They can be officials from different government departments, whose help is needed to conduct these matches, or guests from other walks of life. The CoA had stopped this and it’s a good move by the new dispensation to reintroduce it,” a state unit president told this daily.
The BCCI has also decided to issue seasonal accreditation passes to all the state association presidents and secretaries, which will give them access to all international matches. Earlier, they were given tickets by the hosting units on a match to match basis. In the new system, these officials can go to any match with that one pass for a full season.
There are also talks of increasing an association’s quota for the number of tickets it gets for a match it is hosting. According to the Lodha recommendations, this was not to exceed 10 per cent of the total capacity. But after the units pointed out impracticalities, this rule was relaxed. The new board has plans to increase this further. These rules are expected to come into play from the West Indies series starting next month.