In a bizarre of incidents, the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) has asked five of its former officials to attend before the inquiry committee, which is investigating into the issue of 405 unsold tickets for the 2011 World Cup.
The MCA has called its former joint secretary Lalchand Rajput, World Cup's ticketing in charge Ganesh Iyer, Shripad Halbe, Pradeep Zaveri and former vice-president Ratnakar Shetty at its headquarters on 26th June Wednesday.
The MCA treasurer Mayank Khandwala, who is also the convener of the inquiry committee, rushed emails to the five officials on Saturday, asking them for clarification on the issue.
In fact, MCA suffered a loss of Rs 74 lakh when almost 405 tickets for the World Cup final between India and Sri Lanka went unsold under mysterious circumstances. Out of these tickets, 96 belonged to the Sunil Gavaskar Stand (lower bay), which were reserved for general public. Each of the 96 tickets were priced at Rs 1,500.
Meanwhile, Rajput and Iyer replied that they won't be able to attend the inquiry committee meeting as they are of town. The former Indian cricketer-turned-coach Rajput is currently in Ahmedabad where he is conducting a National Cricket Academy camp. He informed that he won’t be available as he is busy with BCCI camp in Ahmedabad. On the other hand, Iyer confirmed that he will be only back on 27th June as he is in Verawal.
Bizarrely, MCA had called up Shetty too, whom they have banned for five years only few weeks ago. Notably, Shetty was the treasurer of MCA during 2011 World Cup. Till date it is obscure that whether a person banned from the MCA can make it to the premises during the given period.
Precisely, during its AGM on 22nd March, Shetty had raised concerns over the proceedings of the inquiry on the matter and had asked for clarification regarding the members on the panel in terms and time frame fixed for the inquiry commission. Actually, it has been more than three months since the report of the unsold tickets emerged but the MCA was unable to find a concrete reason for it. When tried to get in touch with the MCA joint-secretary Nitin Dalal and PV Shetty, both were unavailable for comment.
