Poor turnout marks CLT20 qualifying matches
September 20th, 2011 - 12:26 am ICT by IANS
Hyderabad, Sep 19 (IANS) The qualifying round matches of Champions League T20 failed to enthuse the crowds here Monday with poor attendance marking the inaugural match between Trinidad and Tobago (T&T;) and Ruhunu at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
Though, the turnout improved for the second match of the day featuring Kolkata Knight Riders and Auckland Aces, it was still not to the standards of T20 version.
According to officials of Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA), the attendance for the second tie was a little over 8,000 in 40,000 capacity stadium.
A sparse crowd of a few hundreds watched the first match. With top names like Jacques Kallis, Brett Lee and Yusuf Pathan in action during the second match, cricket buffs walked in to give some respectability to the turnout.
The turnout was poor despite the minimum pricing for the tickets being Rs.100. These are only qualifying matches and except a few KKR players, others are not big names to draw huge crowds, explained an HCA official.
The poor turnout was also attributed to the strike by employees of the state-owned Road Transport Corporation in support of the demand for separate Telangana state. As RTC buses were off the roads, the most affordable mode of transport was not available for spectators to reach the stadium, located almost on the city outskirts.
With high voltage music and cheer girls, the organisers tried to provide some entertainment to the crowds on what proved to be an otherwise lacklustre day of cricket.
- T&T; beat Ruhunu by five wickets in CL T20 qualifier - Sep 19, 2011
- T&T; outclass Leicester to qualify for main CL T20 stage - Sep 20, 2011
- Cricket fervour missing, but6 India get big cheer (Sidelights) - Oct 14, 2011
- Ruhunu beats Leicestershire by four runs in CL T20 - Sep 21, 2011
- CLT20 qualifying round begins Monday - Sep 18, 2011
- We believe in our ability, says Darren Ganga - Sep 21, 2011
- Somerset beat Knight Riders, both teams qualify for CLT20 - Sep 22, 2011
- Hyderabad cricket body seeks divine intervention for victory - Oct 14, 2011
- Spinners did trick for us: Darren Ganga - Sep 19, 2011
- Hyderabad gearing up to host India-New Zealand Test - Aug 16, 2012
- Hyderabad stadium's pavilion named after Laxman - Aug 23, 2012
- Thin crowd at Eden Gardens for KKR match - Apr 13, 2012
- T&T; aims to qualify for main stage of CL T20 - Sep 14, 2011
- Court lifts curbs on arrest of Hyderabad cricket officials (Lead) - Nov 15, 2011
- Eden gets large crowd for its maiden T20 international - Oct 30, 2011
Tags: auckland aces, brett lee, cheer girls, city outskirts, cricket association, hca, jacques kallis, kkr, knight riders, match of the day, pathan, poor attendance, poor turnout, rajiv gandhi international stadium, respectability, road transport, sparse crowd, t20, transport corporation, trinidad and tobago