Cuttack, Jan. 16: The rush to beat the chill and grab tickets for Thursday's ODI clash between India and England are symptoms enough to diagnose that the city is in the grip of cricket fever.
A high-scoring first ODI at Pune yesterday and India's stellar show have set excitement soaring for the tie to be played at Barabati Stadium. The enthusiasm of cricket fans was on show today as counters at the Barabati Satadium opened to sell tickets today. Partha Sarathi Rout, 25, from Bhubaneswar today managed to buy two gallery tickets for the upcoming ODI match between India and England to be played at Barabati Stadium on Thursday.
This will be Rout's first live match at Barabati.
"I am not a cricket enthusiast but the emphatic win over England by Virat Kohli and team forced me to come all the way to Cuttack to buy tickets for the match at Barabati Stadium. I had to wait for more than 10 hours in the cold here to get the tickets," he said.
Subhranshu Sekhar Tripathy, another fan, said people had started to queue up since midnight.
With the Indian team chasing down 350 batting second in the first match yesterday, cricket enthusiasts from several parts of Odisha came to Cuttack to buy tickets from the match later this week.
Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) has earmarked 15,444 tickets for sale to the general public during the two-day counter sale of tickets that began today. Officials said 12,714 tickets were sold on the first day.
Sources said of the 10,362 tickets earmarked for various affiliated units, only 8,669 tickets had been sold and the remaining 1,693 tickets would now be sold to the general public. Earlier, 8,290 tickets were sold online.
The OCA is hoping a packed Barabati Stadium on Thursday.
Many fans expressed dissatisfaction because not a single ticket of galleries 1 and 3 were sold online.
A senior OCA official said tickets were sold through three special counters today.
"Usually, galleries 1 and 3 are the first choice of spectators because they offer the best positions to watch the match live here at Barabati. But since no tickets of either of the galleries were available online, we were forced to come down to Cuttack to buy our preferred tickets," said Bibhu Kalyan Padhi, another cricket enthusiast from the state capital.
Three platoons of cops were deployed to manage traffic and the crowd during the sale at Barabati today.
Despite adequate security arrangements, there was black marketing of tickets and many spectators were forced to purchase gallery tickets priced at Rs 600 at Rs 1,000, said sources.
