10,000 tickets sold in one hour for Ind-NZ 1st Twenty20

Visakhapatnam: The tickets for the first Twenty20 between India and New Zealand here on Saturday are selling like hot cakes as the organisers sold 10,000 of them within an hour after opening the sales, on Tuesday.

In all, 17,000-odd tickets are available for general public at the 27,000 capacity Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy ADA-VDCA Cricket Stadium in the outskirts of the coastal city. Long queues were seen since early morning at the counters and all the lower denomination tickets were sold out. Ticket sales began at 8 am today but the cricket-crazy crowd had lined up since 4 am, M S K Prasad, Director (Operations), Andhra Cricket Association said. "As Yuvraj Singh will make a comeback after battling cancer, the craze is huge. Tickets in the denominations of INR 300, 600 and 1,000 were sold out in first one hour," said the former India Test wicketkeeper. Since yesterday there is bad weather with a few spells of rain but the ACA is hopeful that clouds, as a result of a depression in the Bay of Bengal, would clear up. "We are keeping our fingers crossed. But the good sign is it`s a clear weather forecast Saturday," Prasad added. The ACA has taken all precautionary measures and hopes to make the ground ready in two hours in case there`s a downpour. "We have three super soppers put in place. While we have recently acquired a ground cover that can cover the entire field. We are praying to see a good match," he said. The ACA has set up 21 eSeva kendras (centres) across the city to sell tickets. PTI