CHENNAI: On a Sunday when the stadium was supposed to be full, only a fraction of the crowd arrived at 1.30pm. The match was a high-profile one -- India vs Australia. The MA Chidambaram Stadium at Chepauk where cricket enthusiasts usually fill the stands to the brim, was sparce. What seemed even more bizarre is that the official ticketing platform BookMyShow had declared sold-out days before the match.
After a lull in the stands for the first few games of the tournament, this is supposed to be the match that brings the tournament alive with a packed house. As Pat Cummins won the toss and opted to bat, and Rohit Sharma and Co were getting ready to field vast majority of the seats in the middle and upper stands were vacant.
Fans were filling in the lower stands and were waiting in extended queue outside the gates to enter. However, it did not remain that way for long. As the match went by, crowd started coming in and by 3.30pm, the stadium was painted in blue with about 80 per cent stands filled. The official attendance for the match showed 33,110 (max capacity is 37,000).
BookMyShow apparently opened ticket sales on the morning of the game after showing that the match was sold out. Understandably, it created a buzz on social media with local fans checking the links constantly. One among them was Venkat, a college student from Chennai. “I had been checking the link since morning, but it didn’t work. Then suddenly, it went into the queue around 10.45am (match starts at 2 pm). For about 20 minutes I waited and it opened at 11.10am, and I got two tickets. Even after getting into the ground, people were saying on X (formerly known as twitter) that tickets were open even at 1.30pm. I collected the tickets from Express Avenue mall on the way to the ground and eventually got in,” said Venkat.
It is understood that at times tickets which are put back to resell by people/sponsors who did not want to utilise and those could be made available even after the initial sale is over. However, what is not clear is why BookMyShow decided to open and sell the tickets as late as morning of the game.
Interestingly, on Saturday the BCCI released 14,000 tickets for the India-Pakistan clash a week before the match. The highly anticipated contest between arch-rivals will be played on October 14 in Ahmedabad.