Riverside ODI tickets selling fast

England’s NatWest Series one-day international against Australia at the Riverside on September 20 is well on its way to selling out.

Durham sold a record-breaking 6,000 tickets in just one day after they went on general sale yesterday for the last of seven ODIs between the sides.

That took the number sold to 11,000, including those sold in the members’ priority booking period.

Durham’s website had over 3,000 visits between 9am and 5pm and the telephone lines were extremely busy all day with over 1,500 calls in the first hour.

The club had extensively widened the bandwidth of the website so it could cope with the high volumes and taken similar measures with the phone system.

The Riverside staged a one-day international between England and Australia in June 2005

The Don Robson Pavilion, South West Terrace, North West Terrace and the County Durham Stand are now sold out.

There are just under 4,000 tickets available to purchase and the club is expecting to release a further allocation of tickets in February following the development at the south east side of the ground.

All supporters that are signed up to the Durham free e-newsletter will be advised of the date of the release nearer the time.

Durham head of marketing Mark Foster said: “We were expecting a huge amount of interest in this game and had prepared for a high volume of phone and web sales by improving the technology and by taking on an increased number of staff.

"We would like to thank those people who bought tickets for their patience as in some instances there were queues, despite our best efforts.

“We do advise that those people that want to come to the game book as early as possible to avoid being disappointed.

"It should be a really exciting game and we don’t want people to miss out. Once the development of the second tier of The County Durham Stand is completed we will be in a position to release a further ticket allocation in February.”