ENG vs IND: Any Spare Tickets? Cricket's Informal Economy Returns

The gates had only just opened at London's Oval cricket ground before the fourth day of the fourth Test between England and India on Sunday but a frenzied marketplace was already active. While fan

Three India fans handed over wads of cash to a tout sporting an England cricket cap, while another tout showered a potential customer with obscenities after the transaction was abandoned.

"They're vermin. They just get in people's faces and I dislike them intensely," teacher Natalie Smith, 46, told AFP. One tout, clutching a sheaf of tickets, even advertised his wares in an Indian language to appeal to his target market.

Another seller offered his tickets to three fans for £220 ($305, 257 euros) each, even though the cost of tickets started at £131 ($182, 153 euros) on official websites.

"I find them (touts) thoroughly irritating. They're a nuisance and can be intimidating," said England supporter Peter Norman, a 69-year-old pensioner.

"They belong to a time which I thought had passed with the advance of technology." "It's particularly annoying when you know a lot of tickets have been bought up deliberately for resale to touts -- that is just irritating," he added.

Street merchandise vendors hawked flags, shirts, hats and other items in alleys and driveways to fans looking for bargains. Ahmed Shakir, 37, has supplemented his wages as a shop cashier in this way for 12 years and enjoyed the higher turnover achieved at the weekend.

"Most Indian people spend money. England (fans) don't buy much - they only drink," he told AFP. "When there is sports, we make something out of it. If there's no sports, then it is really hard."

A cricket-loving local resident known as 'Amazing Grace', 60, used the front drive of an acquaintance to sell face masks and hand sanitiser as well as merchandise and in turn used the profits to buy tickets.

But the knock-on impact of the blockage of the Suez Canal by a container ship in March is still leading to a shortage of supplies and has forced her to increase prices, with the stock mainly imported from India, China and Malaysia.

"The blockade is going to get worse. We don't have hundreds of stuff all the time, we don't gain by it," she said."The blockade is going to get worse. We don't have hundreds of stuff all the time, we don't gain by it," she said.