It was not long ago when Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hasan expressed his anger over the mismanagement of ticketing services by the BCB during different bilateral series.
Soon after he was appointed as the president of the BCB ad hoc committee at a dinner party in London, Nazmul said it was a mystery to him how tickets were sold and where all the money from ticket sales had gone.
However, now that the BCB is run by an elected body with Nazmul at the helm, the scenario remains quite the same.
With Bangladesh defeating New Zealand in one match after another, the demand for tickets was sky-high and it reached fever-pitch ahead of Wednesday’s only Twenty20 international between the sides.
The public went crazy during the one-day series after not being able to pick up tickets after waiting in queues for hours, depriving them of a chance to witness the Tigers’ performances.
Bank booths were damaged by angry supporters at Mirpur and Narayanganj prior to the second and third ODI as people were offered very few – and sometimes no – tickets.
A senior BCB official confirmed that banks were provided with 11,995 tickets for the Twenty20 match, which is expected to play out in front of a full-house at the 25,512-capacity Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium following the Tigers’ impressive 3-0 victory in the three-match ODI series.
Organizing committee chairman Gazi Ashraf Hossain refused to provide any details about where the remaining 13,000 tickets have gone.
‘I am not here to disclose to you the number of tickets that we distribute where, how and to whom,’ Ashraf told New Age on Monday.
‘It is an administrative issue that we want to keep confidential. We give the Bank 11,995 tickets and the rest is kept with us,’ said Ashraf.
‘There are a lot of tickets that goes for complimentary and there are some tickets that are kept for the clubs councilors and journalists on option-to-buy criterion.’
‘There are lots of stake holders whom we need to keep happy. Like if Walton or Sahara asks for some tickets then from where we would provide it?’
‘So we have to keep some tickets at our disposal. Earlier we had some problem with the SIBL [the bank that handled ticket sales] during the West Indies [series] regarding this so we had opted to take this way,’ he added.
-With New Age input
