A frenzied atmosphere has been building ahead of the semi-final meeting with Pakistan
For the past four days hundreds of people have been holding a vigil outside the ticket booth of the PCA cricket stadium in Mohali. Every day they are told the same thing: "the match is sold out". And every day they come back regardless. Tickets for India v Pakistan, everybody wants one, almost nobody has one. Poor planning has meant that the biggest show on the subcontinent is being staged at one of the smallest Test venues in India. The Punjab Cricket Association ground seats just 28,000. And once room has been found for the innumerable VIPs, VVIPs and their entourages, there is not going to be much left for anyone else.
The 16,000 tickets that were set aside for the public sold out inside a day. Now some of them are being sold on the blackmarket for 100 times their face value. A 250 rupees (�3.50) ticket can be yours for 25,000 rupees, if you can find anyone willing to sell their seat at what is being billed as the "mother of all matches".
The Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, will be there, as will Pakistan's prime minister Yusuf Gilani, who "happily" accepted Manmohan's invitation to attend as his guest. Manmohan's gesture was intended to help ease diplomatic relations between the two countries, which have been more-or-less frozen since the terrorist attack on Mumbai in 2008. Their meeting is being seen as a piece of "cricket diplomacy", and seems to be symptomatic of the spirit the game is being played in, which is markedly less ugly, if no less nationalistic, than some of clashes between the two were in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Their attendance means that Chandigarh, just 154 miles from Lahore, is a city living under suffocating levels of security. A no-fly zone, guarded by anti-aircraft guns, will be in effect over the suburb of Mohali on the day of the match. At nearby Ambala airbase the fighter jets and helicopters of the Indian Air Force are on permanent standby. Unmanned drones circle in the sky conducting surveillance. Almost 10,000 police and army personnel are on patrol in the streets or stationed nearby.
The politicians are not the only ones who have hijacked the match. On Monday around 1,000 people marched on the stadium to protest against high unemployment in the Punjab. They were charged down by mounted police wielding sticks, and several were arrested. There are also a group who go by the title of the "Pakistan Peaceniks" who have crossed the border to try to promote "the spirit of harmony and cooperation" between the two nations. They say they have printed 10,000 banners displaying a combination of the Indian and Pakistani flags, which they are planning to distribute to the crowd. Very few Pakistan fans are expected to make it across the border, as visas are being granted only to those who have tickets. The Peaceniks were given nine tickets by a sympathetic Indian colleague.
Only 50 tickets were allocated to the Pakistan Cricket Board, and none of those will go to the public. One Pakistani man, Mohammad Bashiruddin, has become headline news because he has flown from Chicago and is outraged that he cannot get to the match. He spends his days marching around the ground with a small posse chanting "Pakistan zindabad!" [long live Pakistan], in between chats with television crews. Back in Lahore, fans will flock to cinemas to watch the game live, though tickets for screenings are said to be almost as hard to come by as those for the stadium itself.
Then there are business tycoons, Bollywood stars, musicians, politicians, and generals. The city has become a VIPers nest. There are so many of them that the airport at Chandigarh has issued an edict stating that private jets will be allowed to pick up and drop off only and must find parking space at either Delhi or Amritsar, because there simply is no space to accommodate them all. Standard flights into the city are fully booked until after the match, despite the fact that fares quadrupled after India beat Australia last week.
Prime ministers aside, no one is guaranteed a seat. India's minister of law and justice has been in the newspapers because he has been unable to find a way in. Officials from the Punjab Cricket Association have turned off their mobiles and gone into hiding, so sick are they of the constant calls from people wanting tickets. The only tickets that are still readily available are the forgeries, which are being sold to desperate fans across the city.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, a cricket match is going to take place. The two teams are under siege in their hotels, both from the hundreds of security personnel and the throng of adoring fans they are trying to keep out. The players emerge to go to the PCA for their training sessions, and then scurry back in convoys complete with decoy buses, outriders and armoured vans that run through fenced-off streets.
India have been persisting with the policy they have had right through the tournament of giving press conferences only when they are compelled to do so by the International Cricket Council.
It is an attempt to protect the players from all that pressure and expectation ? somewhat futile in the circumstances, you would think.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2011/mar/28/india-pakistan-cricket-mohali
Michael Ballack Frank Lampard Steven Gerrard Cristiano Ronaldo
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