Long queues pile up for tickets for 1st Aussie-India ODI

Bangalore, Sept 24 (UNI) Thousands of cricket fans cramped along serpentine queues in front of M Chinnaswamy stadium in the city to buy the tickets for the opening day-night one day international against India and World Champions Australia to be held on September 29.

The Bangalore stadium is the favourite haunting ground for the Indian cricketers as they have won nine of the 14 matches played here so far and lost the rest. Against Australia, it has been a mixed bag with the two teams winning one match each out of the two played here.

Tickets were gobbled up by the fans within a few hours of the counters being thrown open. Only about 20 per cent of the total tickets were sold across the counters. Fans spent who started arriving at the stadium last night, spent the whole night on the pavement and bought the tickets. However, the sale ended quickly and many of them had to go back disappointed.

Angry fans, who missed the chance to see the match live shouted slogans against the Association.

Tight security was in place with a large number of policemen and private security personnel put up by the Association toiled during the ticket sales to manage the huge crowd.

Heavy rush was witnessed at the counter for lower priced tickets. The tickets were priced quite high with only the 'gallery' class offered at Rs 200 for the six-hour match. The other denominations ranged from Rs 1000 to Rs 10,000 for the special seats in the Corporate boxes.

KSCA has gone on line with tickets now available on internet. It has forced a tie-up with Ticketpro India to sell tickets on line, which also handled the ticket sales across the counter.

India play seven one-day matches in the much awaited series against the world champions.

Following is the itinerary: 1. Bangalore, KSCA stadium (Sep 29 D/N 2.30 pm IST), 2. Kochi, Nehru Stadium (Oct 2, 9 am), 3.

Hyderabad, Rajiv Gandhi stadium-Hyderabad, (Oct 5, 3.30 pm), 4.

Chandigarh, Sector-16 stadium (Oct 8, 3.30 pm), 5. Vadodara, IPCL Sports Complex (Oct 11, 3.30 pm), 6. Nagpur, Vidarbha CA Ground (Oct 14, 3.30 pm), 7. Mumbai, Wankhede Stadium (Oct 17, 9 am).

Twenty20 International: Mumbai, Brabourne stadium (Oct 20).

UNI