Mumbai Cricket Association to offer only 5000 tickets for Sachin Tendulkar's farewell match

Only 5000 tickets will be available to the general public for Sachin Tendulkar's farewell Test at the Wankhede Stadium which has a capacity of nearly 33,000.

The Mumbai Cricket Association on Wednesday said that it can only offer around 5,000 tickets for Tendulkar's landmark 200th Test when India face the West Indies here.

"Most of the tickets are our commitment tickets. For public sale it can go upto 5,000 tickets. If you count the 1,500 special tickets of Rs 10,000, the overall ticket total will go to 4,500 to 5,000 tickets. It will be season ticket, and not daily tickets. The demand is so high that we want to avoid the rush of people on the day Sachin comes to bat," MCA treasurer Vinod Deshpande told reporters here.

"We have about total 3,500 tickets for Rs 500, Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,500 price ranges. The East stand lower ticket will be Rs 500 for 5 days, Rs 1,000 for East stand upper tier and Rs 2,500 for the North stand, which will be for public sale," he added.

The association had announced around 1,500 seats to the public at Rs 10,000 each for watching the match (November 14-18) from the upper tier of the Sachin Tendulkar stand.

The MCA has not decided on the mode of sale for the tickets but said it will be either online or counter tickets.

"We will keep counter sale of the Rs 10,000 tickets. We are also allotting these tickets on request. We will decide whether to make the ticket sale online or box office, in a day or two," Deshpande said.

"If we make it box office then security is a concern. We will ask the police and see if we can do metal barricading. We will have to see. In online there are also problems. If we have to issue Rs 500 tickets for the general public then many are not computer savvy. If we make it box office then general public will get tickets," he said.

MCA has already decided to print five tickets for each day with Tendulkar's photo playing different shots on both the sides, as a collector's item.

The MCA has to reserve tickets for members of MCA's Garware Club and for the gymkhanas-Bombay, Hindu, Islam, Parsee, Catholic, as a part of its commitment.

The MCA has also planned to have a gold coin for the toss, which will be later preserved by the association.

"We will use a pure gold coin weighing 10 grams for the toss. It will have Sachin's photo embossed on one side with 200th Test written below and on the other side will be the MCA lion with Mumbai Cricket Association written around it. We will keep it in a museum later as a remembrance," Deshpande said.

"We will make replicas of the coin, which will be gold plated. We will make 1,000 such coins and will give it to the dignitaries as a memento," he added.

He further said that the batting icon's records will be highlighted on the rooftop of the stadium.