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Three days after the ticket counters for Kolkata’s IPL matches were thrown open with aplomb, the response for the Twenty20 championship has been pathetic among the members of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB).
A floodlit Eden is slated to host seven home matches of the Shah Rukh-owned Kolkata Knight Riders team, starting with the opening home match against Hyderabad’s Deccan Chargers on April 20.
Although ticket sales for the general public hasn’t begun yet, the disastrous response from the members indicates that the matches will be played in front of empty stands, and the team owner Shah Rukh’s powerful presence may not be enough to save Eden the embarrassment.
The CAB has 31,000 members — life, annual, associate and honorary — and 121 affiliated units, who all are entitled to buy out their chunky share of tickets before the rest of the tickets for the 87,000-capacity are put out on public sale. Less than a measly 500 members have so far booked their share of tickets for the matches, which is an embarrassment since international matches here see all 31,000 seats for members full.
Far worse than that is the response from the 121 affiliated units of the CAB — the Maidan clubs and the districts. Each affiliated unit is entitled to withdraw 200 to 300 tickets for the seven matches, but barring just a handful of clubs, over 100 of them and all 18 districts haven’t even picked up a single ticket.
The reason behind this debacle is the joint decision of the CAB and Kolkata IPL franchise Red Chillies Entertainment to clip the right of the 31,000 members to watch the IPL matches at Eden for free. Ever since it was announced that no ticket is to be given out for free, fear loomed large that members, who comprise one-third of Eden's capacity, would lose interest in buying tickets, what if the ticket prices are as low as Rs 200, Rs 400 and Rs 600.
Former BCCI joint-secretary and Shyambazar Club official Goutam Dasgupta said: "The response for tickets was bound to be zero the moment the organisers changed the rule and asked members to pay up. With that decision, the organisers have effectively put off the entire 31,000-strong chunk, the members who would have otherwise filled up the stands with free tickets -- like they do at international matches. The second problem is that despite the hype surrounding Twenty20 and new teams, people don't quite like this new concept of quick cricket and entertainment, it's been proved now with the ticket-sale turnout."
The CAB administration in fact has egg on its face, with word going around that the clubs of top officials, CAB president Prasun Mukherjee and joint-secretaries Samar Paul and Amitava Banerjee, have stayed out of booking tickets for the matches.
CAB Vice-President Indranath Dey said: "One reason why ticket counters are wearing a deserted look is because members, clubs and districts are being offered season tickets that are priced quite high. Once daily tickets are available from April 16 onwards, the sales will shoot up."
Things are meanwhile expected to get worse for Shah Rukh's Kolkata project, if one is to believe Trinamool MLA Jyotipriya Mallick, Secretary of the CAB members' forum. The body had taken CAB, Shah Rukh and BCCI to court over the move to sell tickets to members. And after the city civil court turned down their plea, the forum is expected to take the matter to the High Court tomorrow. "We will campaign door to door if organisers don't allow members to attend the matches for free, which is their basic right as per CAB's Rule 15 (2)," warned Mallick
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RatingI am a member of CAB.I want to know how can i book my season ticket on online?
haha..whats the big deal..they are not getting tickets for free, so they r not buying it..since they have to buy it instead of like b4 when they just had to pick it up!isnt even this term they were enthusiastic bfor in buying tickets, bcos they wer never 'buying' bfore! and for red chillies, they wudnt care the cam members bought tickets or not, bcos free pass ppl filling up stands wud never hav helped them anyway. they shud make a cut off date and issue all those 30000 quota to public imo.
Chak De Kolkata
Thanks to Indian Express for highlighting this issue. I live in Delhi and would like to point out that very few people are impressed by the media hype over IPL. As a woman I was also shocked to see the IPL TV advertisement in which a woman falsely accused a man of molesting her in a lift just to spite him for backing another IPL team. The whole culture that this tournament is trying to uphold is sickening.
I have been keeping a close watch on this entire fiasco and I don't understand why the CAB admin. isn't counter-suing the members for all this added aggrevation. I've never heard of such a thing. 31,000 tickets given for free. What! Do you think money grows on trees? What exactly do these members contribute to the Garden and Cricket in order for them to get free tickets? Is there a fee that they pay? On top of that, the Civil Court threw out their claim for free tickets and yet they are appealing. Have they all lost their common sense? The tickets not being sold in the Garden isn't an embarrassment to the CAB admin. or to Red Chillies. The members should feel emabarrased because the entire country is looking at them. Forget the country, SRK fans across the Globe are looking at them and their ill demeanor. If the Kolkata IPL becomes a dud, its all their fault for being so close-minded and stubborn. If it were upto me, I'd cease their tickets and sell them to the public.
You miss the point. The members would have paid top dollar if it was worth it. CAB members have stood by the institution even in the era when cricket was not a paying proposition. You may be too young to remember the era when the National Cricket Club, the predecessor of CAB, had to go door to door to beg money to maintain Eden Gardens. It was the members' resilience and love of the game that gave Eden Gardens its distinct character. Shah Rukh and Company will learn the hard way that cricket is a gentleman's game and not a "nautanki". Nobody likes cricket to be reduced to a circus. The game's cultural moorings cannot be denied. Kerry Packer tried the same thing back in 1977, but Australian crowds rejected him before long. Why? Because cricket fans, like all sports lovers, are drawn to stadia by patriotic stirrings. They cheer for their county, their country, their state, their club, etc. Each of these are "brands" developed over generations, not ejaculations of some Bollywood personality.
At last somebody has hit the nail on the head. Thank you Somanjana for highlighting an incovenient truth. I wasn't even born at the time of the National Cricket Club. But I have seen the loyalty and passion with which people followed cricket at Eden Gardens in the pre-sponsorship era. More than 60,000 people turned up to watch the Zimbabwe-New Zealand match during the 1987 World Cup. In the final match of that tournament, though people were terribly disappointed that India wasn't playing, a packed house of 1.20 lakh people turned up to see Alan Border's Australia beat England. So, a cricket fans loyalty is not necessarily limited to his own country, but for the game. In England, hundreds of people turn up to watch 3-day matches between counties. But this won't work with "nautanki" cricket. The "market" for cricket, as the bright boys behind the IPL series will find out, is, well, "different".
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