Things got wild outside Odisha’s Barabati Stadium on Friday morning. Thousands of cricket fans packed the ticket counters, all desperate to grab a seat for the India–South Africa T20I on December 9.
Massive Chaos at Barabati Stadium
Authorities tried to get ahead of the chaos by banning overnight lines and saying nobody could queue up before 6 am. Didn’t really work. People started showing up around midnight, and by sunrise, the place was jammed.
When the counters finally opened at 9, there were thousands already crammed together, all pushing forward.
VIPs get passes. Fans get chaos.
Absolute mayhem outside Barabati Stadium for India vs SA T20 tickets.
41k+ seats at Barabati.
Most reserved as passes.
Only 2k tickets sold online. Few thousand offline.
Fans left struggling. 🏏💔— Manas Muduli (@manas_muduli) December 5, 2025
Huge Crowd Surge Outside Barabati Stadium
Videos began to appear on the Internet almost instantly, crowds rushed, fans pushed beyond the barriers, and everybody was simply fighting to get their hands on a ticket. A gentle lathi-charge of the police was necessary to quiet the people, who were insurrectionary.
Frankly speaking, you understand why people did everything. Big matches do not come by in Cuttack nowadays. The most recent international in Barabati was in February 2025, when England was beaten by India in an ODI.
Prior to that, India visited South Africa in 2022 in this country, and the South Africans snatched a victory in a close T20 match, with 149 in defence.
It is the beginning of the last twenty-match series of the home matches of India against South Africa. The teams travel to New Chandigarh on the 11th after Cuttack on December 9 and then to Dharamsala, Lucknow and thereafter conclude it in Ahmedabad on December 19.
