Rush at PCA stadium Monday for sale of tickets. Jaipal SinghAs many as 7,117 tickets were soldMonday for the fourth match of the ongoing India-Australia ODI series on March 10 at Mohali’s IS Bindra Punjab Cricket Association Stadium. While the online sales for some higher denomination tickets had started last week, the sale of tickets for all the categories at PCA Stadium counters and the designated ICICI Bank branches in the tricity started Monday.
“The response has been good and a total of 7,117 tickets have been sold Monday, which also includes 2000 tickets sold online. The highest number of tickets sold so far— 4060 — are for the VIP block. The second highest was 1324 tickets for terrace block. A total of 844 Chair Block tickets have been sold apart from 342 student block tickets. Apart from this, 220 Box and 240 AC Lounge tickets have been sold. There have been a lot of demand for tickets and we have put 90 percent of tickets for sale and only ten percent are the complimentary passes. This has been done as per the Supreme Court order and to give more fans an opportunity to watch cricket matches at the stadium,” said RP Singla, honorary secretary, PCA.
The stadium, built in 1994, so far hosted 24 ODI matches. “We had a meeting of the steering committee under the chairmanship of Rajinder Gupta, president, PCA and the government and police officials. Mohali SSP H S Bhullar assured us a foolproof security of the match and a PA system will also be installed along with CCTV cameras in various parking blocks. The pitches too have been fully prepared and both the teams will reach Chandigarh on March 9,” added Singla.
The Indian team has played 15 ODIs here winning ten out of them. During the last ODI played at the stadium in December, 2017, India had scored a massive 141-run win over Sri Lanka in the second match of the series.
During the match with Sri Lanka, the student block tickets at the 27,000 capacity stadium were priced at Rs 200 while chair block tickets were priced at Rs 350. The rest of the ticket prices were the same except the Enclosure ticket which were priced at Rs 10,000, which are now priced at Rs 5,000. This time, the student block tickets are priced at Rs 250 while chair block tickets are priced at Rs 500.
“The lower denomination tickets were not available at the bank counters. We had to stand in a queue at the PCA Stadium. We got the tickets after a long wait. The PCA should sell some amount of chair block tickets online so that it’s more convenient for cricket fans,” said Rakesh Kumar, a Ropar resident , who came to buy the tickets at Mohali Monday.
