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Beware of Ashes tickets on the Internet

July 26, 2006 15:44 IST
For the 40,000 English fans estimated to travel to Australia to watch the Ashes series that begins on November 23, there is bad news. Cricket Australia is planning to cancel tickets that have been bought over the Internet for higher than their face value, says a report in London's The Guardian.

The Australian cricket authority wants to crack down on touts who often buy the tickets in bulk and hawk them on Internet sites like ebay.com for prices higher than their value.

The Guardian report says Cricket Australia has taken the help of technology to cancel 1,300 such tickets already. If Cricket Australia finds out a ticket is being sold at higher than its value, it cancels the ticket's bar code. At the ground, a bar code reader detects the tickets that have been cancelled, and the spectator carrying such a ticket has to go home.

Cricket Australia is trying to get the government to regulate Internet ticket sales, though, the report says, eBay maintains it is doing nothing wrong.

Ricky Ponting's men lost the Ashes for the first time in 18 years last September.

rediff Cricket Bureau