ICC vows to investigate ticketing process

The ICC has acknowledged shortcomings in the ticketing process for the World Cup, and has vowed to investigate it thoroughly and come back prepared for the next world event, especially when the demand for tickets is high. An otherwise successful World Cup was marred by the inconvenience caused to especially those who bought tickets online, and also reports of black-marketing of tickets. The website selling tickets for the final also crashed because of the huge traffic. There were even baton assaults by the police on queues of ticket-seekers in India.

Haroon Lorgat, the ICC's CEO, said after the meeting of its executive board that ticketing was one of the more important lessons the ICC has learnt from this event. "There is certainly something on the ticketing process that we need to consider for future events, particularly where there is such a high demand for tickets," Lorgat said. "Other than that I do not want to at this stage think about the detail. Overall I am very impressed with the way the event went."

Lorgat promised a through look-in into what went wrong this time, and what changes need to be made. "The board has today agreed with the proposition that we will do a full investigation on the process [by which] tickets were handled, sold and distributed," he said. "Once we get the result of that investigation we will determine what sort of action will be necessary and what sort of process we should install in the future."

As expected the concern lies with the events held in the subcontinent, where the huge demand for tickets dictates that the process be handled with due care. For the bigger matches, there have been reports of black-marketing. Lorgat said the ICC wouldn't mind legal recourse if those black-marketers have been arrested. "We will certainly not condone that sort of behaviour. We don't accept it. If there is any arrest that has been made, we will proceed with that."