The Bangladesh Cricket Board on Saturday came up with a new breakdown of World Cup tickets, which indicates that the number of tickets for public consumption might be lesser than what was anticipated earlier.
The tickets of the World Cup will go on sale from today at 80 booths of two banks – The City Bank and Agrani Bank – across the country.
Hundreds of people started to queue up at the designated branches since Saturday evening, but it remained unclear if all of them will be lucky to get a ticket.
In the latest breakdown which did little to remove public confusion over World Cup tickets, BCB president AHM Mustafa Kamal said the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium will have a seating capacity of only 25,167, which is 342 less than what the BCB had revealed to the press last week.
Of the total seats, about 1,900 will be killed due to the sight screens on both sides of the ground, which means only 23,267 tickets will be available for the matches at the SBNS.
Of the total tickets, the BCB will have to provide 1,270 tickets to the ICC free of cost and the ruling body of world cricket will have the option to buy another 1,000 tickets per match, said the BCB president.
According to the host tournament agreement, Cricket Logistics, an ICC appointed company, will take away another 1,000 tickets to sell in the participating countries. Minus these ICC obligations, there will be only 19,997 tickets available for the Bangladeshi spectators.
The BCB president said they will give another 1,740 tickets to the 72 Dhaka-based clubs and 2,130 tickets to the 67 district and divisional sports associations.
GS Hasan Tamim, chairman of the BCB’s ticket and seating committee, had earlier said they would distribute 2,511 complimentary tickets among the different ministries, parliament members and other government offices.
In the new breakdown the BCB president said they have dropped the idea of complimentary tickets and will give 15,167 tickets to the banks for sale to the general public. After all these calculations, about 1,000 tickets still remained unaccounted for.
In the face of repeated questions from the media, the BCB president finally confessed they will buy some tickets on behalf of the BCB for free distribution to the ministries and other dignitaries.
He, however, failed to provide the details if they will take the tickets from the ones originally allocated for ordinary fans.
‘We have to give tickets to the lawmakers as they have supported us on various occasions. But I can tell you that we will not entertain all the 345 lawmakers, we will give the tickets only to those who have the passion for the game,’ Kamal said.
‘Only BCB directors will get two complimentary tickets each along with 14 tickets option to buy. There will be no other complimentary tickets,’ he said.
In Chittagong 17800 tickets will be available for each game from which some 1500 seats will be killed for sight screen and the ICC will take away another 3270 tickets as part of their agreement. Another 509 tickets will be reserved for clubs means 12,521 tickets will go to bank for public.
‘We cannot take a single ticket from ICC as it was under the contracts when we were granted to be a co-host of the tournament,’ said Mahbubul Anam, a senior vice-president of BCB.
Asked why they have issued so many contradictory statements, BCB president Kamal said he cannot take the responsibilities of the information his body previously provided to the media.
‘I was willing to meet you guys with exact number of break down. But I did not get that time. I don’t know about who give what break down earlier. What I have given you today it is final,’ he said.
