Cricket fan Ismath Jerin Barsha had to wait for nearly 20 hours in the queue to collect her ticket for the Asia Cup final between Bangladesh and India, scheduled in Mirpur today.
Barsha watched almost every match from the gallery for the last six years, but she never faced such a long queue to buy a ticket. Much to her agony, she also had to face tear gas before she finally came out successful.
‘This is the first time I faced tear gas and baton charge in the queue as I was waiting for tickets,’ said Barsha, a post-graduate fine arts student in a private university in Dhaka.
‘But, finally I got the ticket for which I was eagerly waiting for,’ said Barsha, who got her ticket as the first woman on Saturday afternoon in Mirpur’s United Commercial Bank Limited branch.
Like her, hundreds of male and female Bangladeshi fans had to wait for hours only for many to return empty handed due to the scarcity of tickets.
‘I had been waiting for tickets and finally got it after a long struggle since Friday night,’ said Sharif Khan, the first male who got the tickets for the normal gallery.
Mohammad Nasir, a cleaner of Dhaka City Corporation, could fetch a ticket and he was coming out of the bank with a big smile on his face. ‘I came to the bank at 11:00pm on Friday and finally got a ticket now,’ he said.
‘Nearly 20,000 fans gathered in Mirpur branch to collect the final match’s tickets but in reality bank told us they would sell only 250 tickets,’ said Dhaka Metropolitan Police additional deputy commissioner Masudur Rahman, adding ‘So, we asked the authorities to stop selling tickets on Saturday morning apprehending that the sold tickets might be snatched.’
A senior police official told New Age that the bank got only 5,500 tickets for public.
Among the tickets, 1,000 were sold by U-cash and rest of the tickets were supposed to be sold at the lone centre in Mirpur branch, the official said, adding, ‘But, the bank started giving various versions over the numbers of tickets.’
The official capacity of the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium is 25,500.
Of those, 7,500 tickets were distributed as complementary while 2,000 tickets were reserved for Indian High Commission in Dhaka.
‘Four thousand for organisers and two thousand others for the government agencies,’ said another police official, adding, ‘We are not sure how many go to black market and from where.’
Witnesses told New Age that the cricket fans went on the rampage and clashed with police in front of the bank after failing to collect tickets.
As the authorities were getting late in selling out those tickets the fans started chaos while the police officials claimed they charges baton and used tear gas to disperse the fans, leaving nearly two dozens of people injured.
‘As the law enforcers tried to disperse them, a chase and counter chase took place between them and the cricket fans,’ said Shahadat Hossain, an East West University student.
Being beaten, the agitated fans damaged windowpanes of many vehicles that got stuck in near Mirpur-10 intersection.
Later the agitating fans entered the alleys in the area and vandalised some vehicles.
Traffic on the busy road from Mirpur 10 roundabout to Mirpur-12 bus stand came to a halt for nearly one hour following the incident. Police also detained 8/10 people from the spot.
After the day-long chaos, sale of tickets resumed at UCBL Mirpur branch at 4:30pm.
‘I think the authorities should improve the ticketing system,’ said Barsha.
-With New Age input
