It was a great day for a Test match; clear sky, sun shining bright, and unexpectedly, fans started lining up at the gates of the Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Cricket Stadium in Greater Noida. Afghanistan and New Zealand players were gearing up for the historic one-off Test, but the venue, which looks like the pristine Basin Reserve in Wellington, was galaxies away as far as the ground management is concerned; with no real drainage system in place the groundsmen has their work cut trying to make conditions playable after the heavy rains on the eve of the Test match.
What started out as a ground inspection at 12 PM IST, went on till 3 PM and finally at 4:30 PM, before the day was called off in the hope for better luck tomorrow.
While the prolonged monsoon and the unseasonal rain were to be blamed for cricket’s no-show today, but the weather and the ground conditions – to a certain extend – is not in anyone’s control often and you could sympathise with the personnel at the Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Cricket Stadium who were trying hard to get the ground ready.
But is this ground ready to host a Test match or at the least any sporting any porting activity of international stature? The scene at the stadium complex was a reality check for the management and for the officials hosts ‘Afghanistan Cricket Board’, and it was the media personnel’s who bore the brunt of the shoddy management.
The Indian domestic season kicked off last week with the Duleep Trophy fixture while the international home season is set to being September 19 with the Bangladesh Tests; and so the historic Afghanistan vs New Zealand Test was sort of an appetizer for the not just the Indian fans for those who cover cricket in the country.
However, talk about the appetizer leaving a bad taste in the mouth! Media personnel were greeted to makeshift tents and few chairs to cover the fixture. It is another thing for making your way to the designated area if it is a World Cup fixture in New York, as many of the media colleagues must have faced earlier, this year, but in near empty stadium with hardly a few spectators – most of whom were ‘arranged’ for the fixture – the media contingent had to take round of the stadium to find a way to the tents, walking across a park and underneath a tree (yes, read that right) to make it to the tent.
The facility was nowhere close to a media enclosure. Rather, a make-shift arrangement to just keep the journalists seated. And that’s it. No drinking water, no toilets… and in such a scenario, asking for a table, internet connection, power supply seemed too much. The media contingent had no options other than to fend themselves. Ringing up a few people within the Afghanistan team management to get the things done, proved futile.
Things did get better, but, at a snail’s pace – similar to how the inspections on the wet and damp patches were going on in the ground. Almost 2 hours after making the phone calls, food packets and a couple of crates of water bottles arrived and that was all for the day!
The media enclosure finally opened, but by the time the play was called off.
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