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Tear gas used by police
At least 20 people were injured when police used batons and tear gas to disperse cricket supporters trying to get into the final one-day international between Pakistan and England in Rawalpindi today.
The injured included two college students who had valid tickets and two Pakistani photo journalists, witnesses said. Police resorted to gas when the crowd started pelting them with stones only an hour after the start of play in the last of the three-match series.
The violence spread later and a rampaging crowd broke glass and damaged the nearby Rawalpindi Arts Council building. Angry youths also set tyres ablaze outside the stadium and damaged some vehicles.
"Our strategy was to hold all those people who were without tickets but once they went berserk we had to use tear gas," Saeed Wahla, deputy police commissioner, said. Sources said that people with bogus tickets had been allowed into the stadium while some with valid tickets had been kept out.
The local administration was strongly critical of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). One PCB official inside the stadium was locked in a room when he tried to take control of a radio commentary box.
Roads to the stadium were blocked to control the fans, many of whom said they had valid tickets.
Others complained they had been unable to find tickets except on the black market.
General Tauqir Zia, the PCB chairman, had publicly apologised for mismanagement after ticketing problems at the first match in Karachi but the situation was repeated in Lahore for the second match last Friday.
In another embarrassing glitch, a brand new digital scoreboard inside the stadium was out of order.
The PCB recently bought three digital scoreboards from a Malaysian firm for $10 million.
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