BANGALORE, March 26: Arrangements for foreign journalists covering the Pakistan-India Test series have been below par and surprisingly no one is willing to take responsibility for the inconvenience caused to the visitors.
When the press corps arrived for the first Test in Mohali at the Punjab Cricket Association (PCA) Stadium earlier this month, they were told
that a security deposit of Rs3000 was required to obtain a local telephone line for establishing an internet connection.
When that money would be returned?
The organizers had no answer. That left the newsmen in a tricky situation indeed. Some chose to go for it others did not. Those who did are still awaiting refunds with the first half of the series approaching the home stretch.
The journalists were also being charged for using the internet facility at the media
centre in Mohali where jut a few desktop computers were provided to cater for the needs of about a 100 newsmen.
This meant a loss of valuable time. From Mohali to Kolkata’s Eden Gardens, things were only slightly better. Although the deposit for a phone line was Rs 1000, when exactly that money would be refunded, no one knew.
Despite there being a media officer at each venue, journalists had a lot of running around to do to trace them.
On to India’s Information Tenchnology hub of Bangalore, where the third Test of the series began on Thursday at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, there was a complete blackout of the internet on
the first day and the jour-
nalists faced immense problems to send out their dispatches.
The journalists here have also had to face problems in collecting their accreditation cards with the organisers not easy to get hold of.
Annoyed by the poor media
and accreditation facilities, the Sports Journalists Federation of India (SJFI) has complained the secre-tary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).
The arrangements for the visiting journalists here bear no comparison to the facilities that were provided to the Indian media when their team toured Pakistan last year in the ground-breaking series between the two countries.
