Ipl Tickets Rage

April82010

Do you love cricket? Is it a second religion for you? Do you enjoy watching cricket and do not leave any chance of going to stadium to watch your favourite stars in action? If this is the case with you too, you would definitely understand my pain and sorrow.

I am a cricket lover who has always followed all sorts of matches, irrelevant of the teams or formats. I can even watch the retransmission of matches that were played played a decade back between some minnows.

My excitement was uncontrollable when I figured out that my office was closed on the day of the finals of IPL 2010. Thus started my journey for getting tickets for the finals which in start seemed very rosy, but turned out to be one full of thorns as time passed.

I specially took a day off from my office citing stomach infection as the reason. I wanted to devote the day for purchasing the tickets and for celebrating after that. My boss, who knew about my love for cricket doubted me when I said I was down with stomach infection. His cross questioning was worse than the one done by FBI or CTU. It was not a big deal for someone like me who has a habit of lying and bluffing. He got convinced and granted me leave. In fact he send me a get well soon text too which convinced me that I indeed am a good bluffer.

My hunt for ticket started with calling some friends who like me were cricket fanatics. Though everyone denied having tickets with them, am sure a few of them were lying. As I was determined to go to the stadium I started my journey to its booking office. What welcomed me there was a long queue, probably longer than any I had ever seen in my life. It was longer than queue for tickets of a blockbuster movie and longer than that for the ration lines. It seemed entire Mumbai was out there to get tickets.

After two hours of standing in the queue it seemed it moved just millimeter ahead. Soon came the news which I was dreading. There was an official announcement that said all the tickets had sold out. There were girls who started crying and guys who were angrier than a Spanish bull. These emotions were of no use as the officials didn’t get influenced by it.

After a lot of begging they told there were a few left in the second stadium which was at the other end of the city. Within seconds that place was deserted as all of us ran to get those tickets. Struggling for four hours in Mumbai traffic is nothing less than an accomplishment. After achieving this accomplishment when I reached the other stadium I realized that it was totally empty, this meant there were no tickets.

A couple of days back I found out that there are many corporates which have bought these tickets and are using contests and other marketing gimmicks to give away these tickets as prizes. I hunted for these corporate and tried finding out what the contests were.

Out of the few I searched about I found the one which was started by GoJiyo as the most exciting one. This new online gaming portal has asked the users to make profiles and invite friends. The one whose invites would result in maximum profiles would win. I have send invites to many.

Check out the official GoJiyo website, Know more about the IPL Tickets Contest