World Cup

The England-India match on the 27^th of February will have a super set security with personnel of 1800 policemen allocated by the city police to manage the situation in and around the stadium. This decision has come after the chaos and consequent lathi-charge outside the Chinnaswamy stadium unleashed on the crowd on Thursday by the police.

Last year during the Indian Premier League a bomb had exploded outside the stadium injuring 8 people. Thus a very stringent security can be expected during the match on the 27^th. It is expected that about 800 of the personnel shall be stationed within the stadium while 1000 shall be stationed outside and a 500 meter exclusion zone will be set-up around the stadium.

While the 7000 odd tickets were sold for the match on Thursday the tickets were sold off in a matter of three hours. The fans who could manage not even one ticket, in thousands, refused to budge from the ticket counters asking for more tickets to be sold. With no other option at their hands the police had to use force as is the case anywhere in India. Finally the injured were carried off on stretchers to nearby hospitals.

The ICC head of legal affairs, David Becker, in his letter to the state association had warned “potential for chaos and physical injury when the box office sales open”.

The tickets are issued by the state associations and there are certain reservations about the number of tickets given out for public allocation. In fact for some of the matches many of those who had purchased the tickets online have not yet received their tickets because the agencies have themselves not received the tickets from the state associations.

Given the gravity of the situation the High Court of Delhi has limited the number of complimentary tickets to 10,000 for any match held in the city and has ordered to allocate 30,000 tickets for the general public for the future matches.

The tickets issued for the public in the April 2^nd Finale is also limited to 4,000.

The secretary of Karnataka State Cricket Association, Javagal Srinath said, “There is a limit to how much we can fulfill people’s expectations.” “It is a big challenge but even our hands are tied. For a match of this stature, even if you double or triple the amount of tickets for the public, it won’t be enough. That’s the tradition in India and we expected this mad rush.”

One only hopes that the game of cricket on the 27^th is not interrupted due to public misbehavior , which might eventually result in the match going in the favor of England by default , since India are one of the host nations like the 1996 semi-finals.

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