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Delhi’s disgrace goes online
National shame’ — that’s the reaction of Indians online after the final one-dayer between India and Sri Lanka had to be called off on Sunday “due to unplayable conditions”.
National shame’ — that’s the reaction of Indians online after the final one-dayer between India and Sri Lanka had to be called off on Sunday “due to unplayable conditions”.
Just a day after Delhi boy Gautam Gambhir was declared the ‘ICC Cricketer of the Year’, cricket lovers across the country are venting their anger online over what transpired at the Feroze Shah Kotla grounds on Sunday.“What a shame… and we are supposedly the strongest cricketing body,” writes Souvik, on an Orkut Indian cricket fan community with more than 29,000 members.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that ‘unplayable conditions’ have played spoilsport on Indian an pitch. In 1997, a match had to be called off in Indore just after three overs — ironically, the opponents were same.
Another Test match against Australia, a few years ago, had also come under fire for similar reasons. All these from the richest cricketing body in the world.
But this time, much more is at stake — the World Cup 2011. Delhi stands a chance of being completely chucked off from the mega event’s venue list. The Capital had already lost out to Mumbai when it came to hosting the final match, and this may be the final nail in the coffin. “A ditch in the name of a pitch,” tweets Rocket84. “Delhi bowls India out,” tweets anamus_c.
And Delhiites are not only sad, rather, they are angry. “If cricket with so much money has to face such incidents, imagine the plight of other games in India,” feels Rahul Katoch, a DU student.
The Commonwealth Games is already keeping authorities under some serious performance pressure. The Kotla incident comes as a bigger worry. “This is an alarm call for Commonwealth Games,” says Rigved Ghia on a blog. “This was just a cricket match,” tweets Raghavendra. “God save the CWG.”
