Bengaluru, Feb 26: International Cricket Council (ICC) chief executive Haroon Lorgat on Saturday expressed satisfaction over the preparations made by the Wankhede stadium, Mumbai ahead of its scheduled ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 games addressing media persons in Bengaluru.
“We have the views of the experts who have done the inspection and I’m satisfied that the stadium is prepared,” he confirmed.
Reacting to the huge demand for World Cup tickets, Lorgat said, “It shows the popularity of the game. We need to find better ways to be able to distribute tickets. But the reality is, if tomorrow we have 100,000 seats, we still won’t have enough tickets to go and satisfy the public demand.”
The ICC head also addressed concerns about the illegal sale of match tickets. “I can assure [you] that we will not tolerate black marketeering. We have arrested a few in Sri Lanka [in this regard],” he said.
On the subject of issuing tickets to commercial partners, Lorgat said, “I think [there] are 1270 top-end tickets that we have allocated for our commercial partners.”
When asked whether centralising the ticketing system was the way forward, the ICC chief said, “[If] my memory [serves me right], that’s how the 2015 ticketing [process] will be.”
Lorgat also spoke about the decision to use the much talked about Umpire Decision Review System [UDRS] in the mega event. “We did make a bold decision to use the UDRS in the World Cup. So far my experience of what I have seen is that it is a good decision and in the future we will discuss [the issue] at the cricket committee meeting in May. We will consider all the feedback after that meeting,” he added.
