Ticket sales always begin before hand online, and the PCB likes to point that out whenever anyone criticises their ways in these matters, but this argument is hopelessly flawed. Truth is that the overwhelming majority of people who seek tickets have little or close to no online access, and even if they do, some of them, like me, prefer to buy them off line, in real life.

Given the knowledge that any tickets for any matches will always be high in demand, especially for ODIs, and even more so when a match is being held in a city like Peshawar, which doesn’t usually get a lot of cricket, why on earth would you want to wait till the very last minute to begin ticket sales?

Such procrastination is an open invitation to black marketers and impulsive fans that might get angry and impatient if they miss out, and then minor outbursts, like the one described in the story above, follow. Of course, you can’t keep everyone happy, in a city of over 2 million people, not everyone one will get tickets, but at least, starting from well in advance will ensure maximum number of people get their tickets by legal means and minimum will get ripped off buying them at exuberant last minute hiked prices.

What is most annoying for me is that this happens every season without fail yet the PCB remains oblivious to its shortcomings, and ticket sales never go on sale well in advance as they ought to. It is no surprise hence that I have no idea when ticket sales for the final ODI in Karachi will begin, the match is now less then a fortnight away.

Incidentally, only the other day some one was telling me how they were about to buy their tickets for a Pakistan-England test in August! And did I even mention that the tickets for the 2007 Ashes are already on sale?

Zainub,

You could have named this 'the profits of procrastination' - for this sort of procrastination is invariably done to fill the pockets of some people at the centres. What's the fun if the tickets are sold at the right price at a counter with small queue and all of it has to go to the board's coffers?

For all you know, a post-facto look into the accounting of ticket sales for a match may astonish you by revealing that the stadium was half-empty during a match that the entire world had seen getting filled to the rooftop!

The issue is best left alone as there may be no end to harping on this. Different Strokes is a place filled with the joy of cricket, and discussing morality in official functioning may spoil some of it.

umm....tickets for the karachi ODI have been on sale for over a week...from the PCB website of course :P

Is it just me or does everyone feel that if a topic/article ain't corny it doesn't have a place on Different Strokes?

Yes, you can add me to the list, Jay, though "corny" is a much more polite term than the one I would use. I am amazed though, that the only"Pro-Pakistan" Blogger in this whole place does not see fit to talk about a certain victory in Karachi over a certain country that will remain nameless. Perhaps she does not want to upset the delicate sensibilities of her fellow bloggers. Strange since they do not have any compunction when it comes to her feelings.

That's a tad unfair on us DS folk, Feroz.

Pakistan / Pakistanis have come to be praised in quite a few articles from the rest of DS bloggers, mostly from that certain country:) Maybe the 1st two pitches were not amongst them, but you probably missed out on the similar rumblings closer home.

Hope to erase your complaints - AFTER the series is over though.

Feroz: Ya, thats an insult to all the bloggers here, Zai included! We have had posts praising Inzy bhai to the maximum. Agree with Angs in that aspect for sure.
In fact I think all of us are silent for a number of reasons, prominent being, we try not to go on a witch hunt one day and sing hosannas the next. At least that is true of me.

Angshuman, my dear friend..
Let me put it CLEARLY to you in Football terms: The Test Series is The World Cup; The ODI Series is the FA Cup; even if you won the ODI Series 5-0 I could not care less, the damage has already been done. I'm sorry, I thought that food was best served hot, looks like the "folks" at Different Strokes prefer theirs ice-cold, or not at all. Also, Angs Bhai, I read the Surfer from top to bottom when there's nothing NEW to read on Different Strokes, which is often. We respect the Past, we look to the Future but we live in the Present(Jimmy Cliff). Some of us would like to talk about the present instead of drinking tea and munching on snacks and catching up on homework.

Feroz

We will surely look into your frank and valued feedback there. Meanwhile, we hope you keep up your good habit of checking DS BEFORE going to Surfer:))

DS frequenters,

The idea behind calling the headline article corny was not to offend Zainub. Zainub deserves much praise for her good work; she is forthright and profound, and we can look over her wordiness given that every Moderator on Different Strokes likes to take a long stretched-out route.

The point behind my bitter post earlier was to draw attention to the issues bloggers SHOULD be talking about. For instance, I believe it's high we started talking about the inconsistency between the number of Tests Pak/India/SL play in comparison to Aus/Eng/SA. Ricky Ponting has been around for exactly 10 years, has been dropped from the lineup on at least two occasions, been unfit here and there, and he still has a hundred Test matches to his name. In comparison, Inzy has been around for 14 years, never been dropped for a TEST (was dropped for ODI's following the '03WC) and still has 107 (don't think he has missed more than 15 through injury).

Please take time to dig a little deeper into the stats (I recommend StatsGuru) and get a clearer picture of what I mean. In short, there have been calender years when Pak/India played only 7-8 Tests while England/Aus played 13-14. That really doesn't give our players the chance to go for many records, unless they possess Godlike abilities and start their int'l career at 16.