Kotla remains less than half-filled for 2nd ODI

Moderate crowd turned up at the second cricket ODI between India and England here with only 20,250 people in attendance at the Ferozshah Kotla on Monday.

New Delhi: Moderate crowd turned up at the second cricket ODI between India and England here with only 20,250 people in attendance at the Ferozshah Kotla here today.

The 48,000-capacity stadium saw approximately 20,000 odd spectators watching the match, which is less than 50 percent of total capacity. The most surprising aspect was the lack of demand for 15,000 complimentary passes as most of the stands remained empty. Blame it on India`s disastrous performance in the tour of England recently or the overkill of cricket as Champions League Twenty20 or the absence og big stars, but Ferozshah Kotla has never witnessed such poor attendance in recent past. At the start of the match, most of the stands were empty. Although by evening the spectators started to trickle in but it wasn`t good enough to fill 50 percent of the stands. A cop who has been controlling crowds at the Kotla gate for over two decades admitted that he never had it easier than this time. "Whenever India had played here earlier, we had a difficult time controlling the crowd as people with no tickets would also look for ways to enter into the stadium. But today surprisingly we haven`t faced any difficulty till now," said the official. However, a Delhi and Districts Cricket Association official (DDCA) claimed that by the time India would start batting we will see a full house. The denomination of tickets started from Rs 500 and the highest available was Rs 4,000. The highest denomination stand remained empty with only good response coming from those who bought tickets of lesser prices. PTI