Hockey fans on Thursday ransacked the tickets counters at Kalinga Stadium over non-availability of tickets for the opening ceremony of the Men’s Hockey World Cup on November 27 in which Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan will perform.

Later, sports officials clarified that sale of tickets for the inaugural ceremony would be held online and the sale date would be announced shortly.

Chaos prevailed in front of the counters at the stadium on Thursday after thousands of fans queued up from 2am in the night to get a ticket for the event. However, they were informed at 8am that no sale of tickets would be done. Then, the irate fans went on a rampage and ransacked the ticket counters. The police had to resort to lathicharge to disperse the crowd.

“A section of media had reported that the sale of tickets for the opening ceremony would begin from today. Besides, the people at the ticket counters have also told us the same during the start of sale of tickets for the matches on November 5. Accordingly, we stood in the queue for hours to get a ticket for the opening ceremony,” said Santosh Dash.

There was considerable resentment among people as tickets for the matches involving India and knockout matches of the World Cup were sold out barely within one hour after the counters were opened on November 5. Thousands of fans had to return empty handed after standing in long queue for hours.

The police, on the other hand, said they did not have any information about sale of tickets for the opening ceremony at the counters on Thursday.

“There was no programme of sale of tickets at the counters for the opening ceremony on Thursday. As the crowd continued to gather, our men had to inform them about no such programme. But, the crowd started damaging the barricades for which we had to intervene,” said deputy commissioner of police Anup Kumar Sahoo.