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The England and Wales Cricket Board will ask the government to impose new laws to crack down on ticket touts. The move comes as hundreds of tickets for this summer's Ashes have begun to appear on eBay at astronomical prices.
An ECB spokesman told the Sunday Telegraph: "Hundreds of thousands of England cricket fans have been unable to obtain tickets this year.
"They must find it disturbing to see seats sold for such inflated prices on the internet and outside the ground."
Seats in row 10 of the Lord's Grandstand, with a face value of �102, have received bids of �700 on eBay.
It is thought that gangs of ticket touts secure their tickets by making multiple applications for tickets obtained through a lottery system.
The ECB will join the Rugby Football Union, the Lawn Tennis Association and the Football Associtaion in an informal grouping known as "four Sports."
The group want a 10-year-old law, which makes secondary sales of football tickets illegal, extended to other sports.
They are also demanding that fines for convicted ticket touts be increased from the maximum �5,000 that can currently be imposed for illegally selling football tickets.
The FA insists that sum is paltry compared with the estimated millions of pounds made each year by criminal gangs touting tickets for Britain's biggest sporting events.
MMIX
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