KARACHI, March 8: The claims made by a top official of the company handling sale of tickets for Saturday's first One-day International between Pakistan and India at the National Stadium appeared to be a watershed.

According to Sohail Ahmed, chief executive of Cricinfo Pakistan - an online cricket information service - the tickets were sold out within a couple of hours on Monday.

Investigations carried by Dawn revealed that thousands of genuine cricket fans went away empty-handed despite standing in long queues for hours under the scorching sun.

A few of them complained that some persons succeeded in buying tickets in large quantity for the sole purpose of selling them in the black market. Tickets in the denominations of Rs1500 and Rs1200 were apparently not available on Monday for the majority of the general public as sponsors, corporate houses and PCB officials had already booked them in advance through online service.

The Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) had announced that one person could not purchase more than five tickets after showing the national identity card to the competent authority. But in sharp contrast to the announcement, some of these 'favourites' managed to grab as many as 20 tickets to fleece innocent souls at exorbitant prices.

According to eye-witnesses, the 'lucky' ones were aided in their quest for tickets by some PCB officials, the ticketing agency and law enforcement personnel on duty.

Eye-witnesses also claimed that tickets worth Rs800 fetched as much as Rs2200 to these black-marketeers on Monday itself. Some wise experts in black marketing were not likely to sell off tickets in a hurry because they want to earn the maximum possible profits. It is quite a possibility that a ticket of Rs1500 denomination would lure a buyer willing to pay Rs10,000 to fulfil his desire of watching a 'once-in-a-lifetime' match.

In other parts of the city, where Rs100 tickets were sold at five different places, it was reported that hundreds of unsuccessful fans staged sit-in outside the premises to express their anguish at the non-availability of tickets.

Potential black marketers had a field day with reports of Rs100 tickets being sold between Rs500 to Rs1000. There are some pertinent questions which need to be answered after the abject failure of this experiment of entrusting the responsibility of ticket sales to a company which had nothing to do with marketing.

Who thought of floating the bright idea of having computerised sale of tickets when barely a handful of people know about this innovation? Who was really responsible for the disaster that preceded the ticket-selling operation at the National Stadium at the weekend?

Why was an online cricket website specifically chosen by the PCB to handle ticketing matters instead of banks as it was successfully done for years in the past?

Was it a PCB's deliberate strategy to hire a company which had no idea about ticket selling just to sabotage the series itself? It is still difficult to imagine that Karachi, the cosmopolitan city that is home to around 14 million people, has been allotted just one fixture during India's 40-day tour of Pakistan.

With the National Stadium having an official capacity of just over 33,000, it was always on the cards that mismanagement would take place. But no one had imagined that it would be of such magnitude.