E-Paper
When BCCI chief's passes were black marketed
Organisers of the first Indo-Pak Test are taking utmost precaution to prevent misuse of tickets.
If organisers of the first India-Pakistan Test beginning from Tuesday are taking utmost precaution to prevent misuse of tickets, the genesis perhaps lies in an incident when complimentary passes issued to a former Indian cricket board president were sold in the black market.
Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) president Inderjit Singh Bindra distinctly remembers that incident when Kolkata police caught some people selling the free club house tickets given by the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) to one of his "esteemed predecessors."
After that embarrassment, the CAB learnt its lesson well and started taking measures that would prevent a repeat of the ugly episode.
"In Kolkata, the numbers of the club house tickets are now put in the computers," Bindra said.
"The reason why he (CAB president Jagmohan Dalmiya) does it is that once the club house tickets that were allotted to one of my esteemed predecessors were found being sold in black," said Bindra, also a former president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
Bindra said that it was soon established where the tickets had come from.
"It was detected when the police got hold of those tickets that people were buying in black. It was traced to whom they were issued, which was the president of the board," he recalled.
"Then the president said that I had handed them over to 'so and so' and then a case was registered against 'so and so'," said Bindra, without taking names.
PCA has also decided to sell tickets for the 42,000-capacity PCA Stadium on some strict conditions.
"Our chartered accountants write down the numbers of tickets in the computers and then we hand them over to the banks," said Bindra.
"Banks have noted down the names and the telephone numbers of those who are buying tickets," he said and added that not more than two Test tickets have been one person.
Despite these measures, locals allege that black marketing of tickets is going on.
