Home advantage? Not for Indians
Dhaka, Feb. 15: Feel at home, Dhoni; feel the pinch, Indians. The World Cup is back in the subcontinent, but Indian cricket fans won't be enjoying any home advantage. Cricket lovers in India will have to shell out much more than fans in co-hosts Bangladesh and Sri Lanka to watch matches on home soil. While a Lankan can see his team play by paying just Rs 15, which works out to 36.45 in Sri Lankan rupees according to current conversion rates, Indians will have to cough up at least Rs 173 for a ticket to a match between, say, Zimbabwe and Canada.
If it's M.S. Dhoni and his boys who are playing, the minimum price goes up to Rs 345. That's the lowest cost of a ticket for the India-South Africa match in Nagpur on March 12. However, some tickets will be available closer to the match date and their prices could vary. For fans in Bangladesh, the home advantage wouldn't come as cheap as that in Lanka, but they still have to pay a lot less than their Indian counterparts. All they need to enter a stadium is Rs 114 (178 Bangladeshi takas), which is the minimum price the Bangladesh cricket board has fixed for a ticket.
The maximum they have to spend to watch their team in action is Rs 7,500, which is around Rs 12,500 less than what an Indian has to pay. 'I pity the Indians. I don't think they will pay so much money to watch minnows play. Here, the tickets are nicely priced. We have decided to watch as many matches as possible,' said college student Md Iqbal, who has paid Rs 114 for the February 19 tournament opener between Bangladesh and India. Sources in the Bangladesh cricket board told that tickets for the first match were sold out a month ago, thanks to the 'effective pricing'. 'We had long meetings and decided that low pricing was necessary for common people to get access to the games,' said a source. Fifty per cent of the tickets in Bangladesh have been priced between Rs 114 and Rs 150.
For cricket lovers in Sri Lanka, it couldn't have got better. According to the Sri Lanka cricket board's official website, fans can watch the Lanka-Australia match for just Rs 25 (about 61 Sri Lankan rupees) sitting in the East Stand of the R. Premadasa International Cricket Stadium.
In Delhi, college student Sujit Nair is upset that he won't be able to make it to many of the matches. 'They are too expensive. I will try and get a ticket for a big match, but I am yet to decide. After I saw the fixture, I wanted to go to at least two to three matches, but now that's not possible. They could have at least kept the prices of tickets for matches involving the lesser teams a little cheap. Then some of us students could have gone and watched them. Now it's a guarantee that most of these matches will be played on empty grounds.'
If the college student's prediction turns out to be true, Caribbean cricket fans could well say the Indian cricket board hadn't learnt from the past. In the 2007 World Cup in the West Indies, stands remained empty because of exorbitant ticket prices. Some Indians are, however, willing to shell out whatever is needed to watch their favourite teams play. 'We are also paying for the ambience that Indian stadiums offer,' said Subhodeep Sanyal, an executive working in Mumbai. 'Plus, we are a mad bunch, and we love our cricket.'
News Posted: 16 February, 2011
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