Barmy Army fights for Ashes tickets - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

Barmy Army fights for Ashes tickets

By Chris Lines 22/12/2005 03:09:04 PM Comments (0)

England's famed Barmy Army supporters group is urging Cricket Australia to prevent them and ordinary fans from being squeezed out of the next Ashes series.

The Barmy Army has received more than 10,000 inquiries about tickets for the 2006/07 series, and expect 25-30,000 English fans to make the trip.

But the interest sparked by the thrilling 2005 series has led to fears of restrictions on tickets as the theatre-going set is set to squeeze out more committed fans.

"What will happen with this level of demand, we don't know, but we've told Cricket Australia that we want lots of tickets," Barmy Army founder Paul Burnham said.

"We've told them that if they give us 30,000 tickets for the Sydney Test we could get rid of them.

"Hopefully it's not going to end up being a big corporate sandwich and that Cricket Australia will do the right thing by us."

Burnham, who has attended the last three Ashes series in Australia, said typically only 10 per cent of English fans travelled as part of an organised tour.

He thought independent travellers and those English tourists and backpackers who go to a game when the national team is in town will be more vulnerable to ticketing restrictions than official tour-goers.

Burnham understood calls for restrictions on how many tickets are given to English fans to prevent pro-English crowds.

"That's fair enough, but the English fans went and spent a lot of money in Australia," Burnham said.

"Australian fans haven't wanted to go, even when their side was winning, but now a lot of them will want to go."

Cricket Australia will announce ticket allocations on January 10, with the Barmy Army awaiting that news before finalising its tour packages.

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