Queues for World Cup Cricket match tickets at the branches of the City and the Agrani Bank are getting smaller as most of the most-sought-after gallery and club house tickets for matches in demand have been sold out in three days till Tuesday.
Cricket fans standing in queues alleged they were being offered only high-priced tickets and that too for the matches they were not willing to watch.
India-based ticket booking company KyaZoonga, responsible for online management of the World Cup tickets, however, dismissed the charges and claimed still a plenty of tickets were available.
Nipa Bhatia, the chief executive officer of the company, said they had speeded up the process adding about 35 to 40 booths in the bank branches on Tuesday. Bhatia said the booths would remain open until the last ticket was sold.
‘It is the best system that we could develop and I can tell you tickets are being sold in a very democratic process,’ Bhatia told New Age over telephone.
‘We did not give any particular branches of any particular bank any different number of tickets. It is the same for branches in Bandarban and in Dhaka. All of the tickets are in our system and if someone does not get a ticket they must have been sold out,’ she said.
Fans alleged that tickets of the international gallery priced at Tk 2,000 and the grand stand priced at Tk 3,000 had not been offered since the banks started selling tickets on Sunday.
A City Bank official said it was a problem and held KyaZoonga responsible for it. ‘We were not given the tickets of the two types. Only KyaZoonga can tell you why?’
Asked about the tickets, Bhatia initially brushed
aside the allegations but later said they had kept the tickets of the international gallery and the grand stand for some matches reserved at the instruction of the Bangladesh Cricket Board.
‘The tickets of the international gallery and the grand stand are available for some matches. Primarily, such tickets are available for the Chittagong matches. We kept the other tickets reserved. It is not my prerogative to tell you exactly why because we have some obligations of confidentiality. You had better ask the BCB,’ she said.
No BCB officials, however, were ready to comment on that.
Bhatia urged the cricket fans to keep their patience and said still there were plenty of tickets up for sales in the system.
Bank officials earlier said they could issue a maximum of 480 tickets from one branch a day, which means in the three days, about 1,15,000 tickets were sold from 80 branches. But the BCB president, AHM Mustafa Kamal, told a private television channel on Tuesday only 45,000 tickets had been sold on the first two days.
