Six and Out - Some Serious Cricket

I have to laugh

by SixandOut on June 1st, 2006

Those poor old Aussies, eh? Nothing’s going right for them at the moment. Bless ‘em. Not only was the vomit-inducingly-titled “Australian Cricket Family” (who came up with that? Dear God!) questioned over its ability to weed out the Aussies from the Rest, but when it came under fire on Day 1 of Ashes ticket-release, it failed pretty much as catastrophically as any other ticket-booking system for pretty much any other event.

The trouble is, to say that it failed is actually totally inaccurate. Those people mouthing off…

• Folks, Ticketmaster have dropped the ball. Absolutely useless. I have missed hours of work today attemping to buy Melbourne test tickets and I haven’t even got close.
• Obviously I was doing something wrong else there is some unfair advantage somewhere.
• It’s the greatest failure in Australian cricket history.
• But its impossible to get tickets.
• Why did we bother registering if we can’t get tickets for the Ashes?
• After waiting so long and being sold out within hours, I won’t be watching cricket anymore. If that’s the best the administration can do they don’t deserve Australian supporters

Yep, that’s right! So-called loyal cricket supporters claiming they’ll never watch cricket again because of the ticketing palava! Amazing. The number of people saying “The system doesn’t work!!” should probably speak to the several hundred thousand people who did buy tickets and ask them if the system works or not. Whether the system is flawless or not (yes, the number of tickets you could buy should have been more severely limited, for one thing) - what did the punters honestly expect? 128,000 phone operators ready? A Beowulf style server-cluster capable of taking that sort of hit on the public website? For Australian Cricket to spend more on selling the tickets than the tickets were actually worth?

It’s simple supply and demand folks! Yes, I’m sure, nay, I know it’s frustrating, but the idiocy of some people astounds me. My favourite:

• Cricket Australia and the method used by their ticketing agencies amounts to nothing more than a lottery that rewards neither the loyal customer who has been turning up for years or new members who have been caught up in the post 2005-Ashes bandwagon. Life just isn’t fair.

Excuse me? Hurray for a cricketing caste system! The system should do exactly that - reward nobody. I’m afraid that some peeps misunderstood the CA claim over the ACF designed to “reward the loyal cricket fan” - did they honestly think there would be some sort of bonus entitlement or similar (and that it wasn’t just marketing speak?).

“86 tickets to the Boxing day test please!”

“OK, sir, but please tell me how long you’ve been watching cricket?”

“Ooh, I don’t know, a couple of months.”

“I’m sorry sir, you’re clearly not a big enough fan, so you can only have 28 tickets.”

“Bloody hell, gosh darn it, what what.”

“Sir, are you a pom?”

“Indeed I am.”

“Oh, in that case have another 50 tickets.”

I can’t wait for general release day. That ought to be another barrel of laughs all round.

Share This

Related Stories

• At least we can laugh about it
• Good light stops play. Again.
• 85mph at your head = funny?
• Rahul Dravid, are you listening?
• Fred starts home schooling

POSTED IN: Cricket