This review is basically written about the experience of south african and indian cricketers who are in kanpur to play the first of the two cricket matches. As a usual die hard cricket fan and a native kanpur resident, I am keeping an eye of all the latest happenings leading up to this match about which the cricket fans are quite excited as The Green Park Stadium Kanpur is hosting an International Cricket Match after nearly 3 years. Last match was a one day international match against England which India won handsomely.
Now I was in Amsterdam, Holland this august where the Videocon Cup took place where the participating teams were India, Pakistan and Australia. It was amazing to see the facilities that cricketers are getting in a country which doesnt host International Cricket and thats what my discussion states from here, Horrible facilities.
Despite being a very large Industrial city and having lots of high quality educational houses ( One of them being I.I.T, Kanpur), this city is still deprived of an Airport(Disappointing but true).
The South African team landed to lucknow ( 90 Kms north west to kanpur) and they were taken in a Bus to kanpur. Just after 5-10 minutes the bus faced some problems and the cricketers got stuck on the high-way for 1 hour.
They landed to Hotel Landmark, Kanpur in the night at 9:30 and would u believe there were rooms booked in the name of Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boye who are not even in the squad. That means there is no communication between the BCCI officials and the UP cricket association (UPCA) who were responsible to book the hotel rooms. Finally the cricketers settled down and enjoyed their first evening in kanpur. Australian Umpire Daryl Harper and Match refree from NewZealand Geoff Crow were pleased to be back here as this is their second visit.
Indian cricketers didnt arrive to lucknow together and most of them came in a group of 3-4. When Rahul Dravid, V.V.S. Laxman (with their wives) and Irfan Pathan landed to lucknow, they werent greeted by any BCCI official at the airport and believe it or not they took personal taxis from lucknow airport to kanpur without any protection. Same happened with Sachin, Harbhajan, Virendra Sehwag and Murali Kathik. Without any security they reached hotel and it COULD HAVE BEEN a disasterous journey, Had there been any unfortunate incident. THANK ALMIGHTY, everything went alright.
Now when the cricketers reached the Stadium next morning, both of teams dressing rooms were deprived of electricity due to a usual power roasting by the local electricity board. South African cricketers were absolutely livid with this, and they were making fun out of it also. They are not allowed to file any official complain regarding facilities till the match is over.
I hope everything goes well. The practice pitches were not of standards and the nets were having holes in them. Sight screen is also outdated. We have Flood Lights here in kanpur and in case of bad light, they can be used to continue the match. South African players demanded to switch on the lights when it was getting dull in the evening. The stadium officials agreed to this, but soon they found that all the batteries of one of the 4 poles are damaged, so they cant switch it on. SA cricketrs again got severly frustrated.
Now the turn comes of the umpires, who thought to check all the facilites. They demanded for Walky-Talky which is an essential eqipment of an Umpire because he uses it in case when he needs to talk to the 3rd umpire or the refree during the match. They were told by UPCA members that no walky talky is available. They need to use mobile phones to communicate. Umpires and match refree were furious as according to ICC regulations, Mobile phone cannot replace walky talky for the match because the mobile networks may suffer from congestion during the match and this may delay the proceedings. Scoreboard was also in a bad condition.
To add on, I have just got the news that I.I.T engineers have inspected the students gallery of the stadium and declared it unfit for large number of spectators as there is a chance of a major collapse of the entire gallery since it is in a very bad shape. This news has spread across the city very fast and 8000 tickets have been put up on hold as the District Megistrate of Kanpur has asked officials not to sell any more tickets of students gallery. This is all happening at the eleventh hour, when the match is scheduled to begin tomorrow. Its very very disappointing. Isnt it ? This could have been done before.
The purpose of my review is just to reflect on the facilities that the foreign and Indian cricketrs get here in Indian and specially in non regular cities who host international matches. These small incidents harm the image of the country and in particular the city. I want to further comment that since cricket is by far the most popular game in India which generate the maximum revenue, why do we always tend to see the lackadaisical attitude of the senior people. Why arent we professional in our attitude in maintaining and providing world class facilites and security to the visitors. We have all the ingredients to equip them with even more facilities than they have in their own back-yard but I find this as a totally unacceptable way of managing things which eventually leads up to embarassment. BCCI certainly has to look into this matter seriously and try to apply hardcore professionalism in any job.
May be I got critical because I compared the management of kanpur to amsterdam. I myself saw the ease of cricketers in holland and they enjoyed their time with nothing to complain about. But I again say, when BCCI have the money, why dont they invest for the betterment of the Infrastructure of stadiums and their facilities. They will only gain appreciation and satisfaction of the visitors instead of complains.
P.S : - Most of the details were provided to me by my friend who is a member of Kanpur cricket association and a good friend and neighbour of current player Mohommad Kaif.