Pricey tickets ruin the fun for many

Rs500 tickets sold out within hours and the only tickets available for public were ranged between Rs4,000 and Rs12,000

LAHORE: In the small ground beside the railway tracks in Nawaz Sharif Colony, a boy plays cricket enthusiastically. With the entire city engulfed in PSL mania, the youngster does not even want to talk about arguably the biggest event of the year in Lahore.

“I tried several times to get the ticket to the PSL final, but every time I was humiliated,” he says while hitting a ferocious shot, expressing his disgust with the authorities. “I hate PSL!”

Danial is among the hundreds or thousands of people deprived of the pleasure of spending the evening at Gaddafi Stadium by the exorbitant ticket prices.



“If they did not want to poor people to buy the tickets, why are they even organising the PSL final in Lahore?” Danial says. “They should have organised the final in Dubai to at least spare us the lockdown.”

Tickets for some enclosures at the stadium were priced at Rs12,000. The Rs500 tickets for the final had sold out within hours and the only tickets available for public were ranged between Rs4,000 and Rs12,000.

When asked about the excitement among Lahori’ites, sociology professor at Punjab University Dr Zakaria Zakar said the Pakistani people also wanted recreational activities like any other nation in the world. “Amidst all the joblessness, unemployment and terrorism, the people have shown keen interest in PSL, which is good for the society,” he said.

Punjab University Clinical Psychology Centre head Dr Farah Malik said the long-withheld frustration had exploded with the announcement of the PSL final in Lahore.



“The government must organise such events frequently, otherwise the frustration of citizens may come out in other ways,” she said. “It is unfortunate that thousands of people have been deprived of watching the match at the stadium. The next time, the government must prefer our deprived class.”

Published in The Express Tribune, March 6^th, 2017