If there was overcrowding at the Indian Premier League (IPL) final it was not due to fraudulent tickets, Cricket South Africa (CSA) said on Wednesday.
The final game took place at the Liberty Life Wanderers Stadium in Johannesburg on Sunday.
CSA conducted an investigation following a newspaper article on Monday which quoted the stadium’s chief executive, Alan Kourie, as saying the stadium had been dangerously overcrowded because of the use of fraudulent tickets.
The investigation findings were released on Wednesday by CSA chief executive, Gerald Majola, who said ticketing was provided by Computicket while CSA managed access control systems to the stadium.
”In 2003 CSA implemented an access control system at all major cricket venues through South Africa,” Majola said.
”This system has received various upgrades since then, and we are very proud to say that we are the only sporting body in South Africa with such a comprehensive and effective access control system.
”Computicket managed to recover the so-called ‘fraudulent’ tickets, to which the article refers, from the Liberty Life Wanderers Cricket Stadium — totalling 327 tickets.
”On checking these ‘fraudulent’ tickets it was discovered that 177 tickets were stolen from Computicket, 66 tickets were stolen from those allocated to the stadium and 144 were actually tickets for the semifinal.
”The official attendance at the stadium for the DLF IPL final was 25 418 as recorded by the access control system.
”If the stadium did in fact have more spectators than this, these patrons would have had to access the stadium via entrances not controlled by the access control system.”
This meant that any overcrowding would not have been caused by the use of fraudulent tickets, but by illegal access to the stadium, which was not under the control of CSA.
”Illegal access could only have been gained through entrances outside of the access control system and these entrances fall under the control and jurisdiction of the stadium management,” said Majola.
”CSA is proud to have hosted DLF IPL 2009, which was a resounding success, and would like to heartily thank the South African public for their support,” he said. — Sapa