Tamasha a day for national sport

It was the first day of practice for the Indian probables at the spanking new stadium. With just over three weeks to go for the World Cup, what would you expect but media attention at the recently inaugurated venue?

But the sequence of events that rolled out at the Major Dhyan Chand Stadium here on Wednesday did not just reflect the apathy in organisational skills of the parties involved but total disregard for the media, whose attention the game has been craving for.

It does not take much for non-cricket officials to crib that Indian media glamourises cricket at the cost of other games and most importantly hockey, considered the national game. But they are the ones who lose the opportunities of getting good publicity even ahead of an event as big as the World Cup.

The media was kept out of the venue on Wednesday, purportedly on security grounds, even as others walked in unchecked. It was quite another matter that a few reporters and photographers made their way in through a side entrance, one of whom was accosted and paraded to the nearest police station. “We have orders not to let the media in,” said stadium project manager MS Tyagi.

SAI joint secretary Prabir Krishna’s contention that the venue was being ‘sanitised’ for the World Cup held little water as one could still see contractors and workers walk in and out of the complex freely. HI did not even seem bothered about it, forget planning in advance for the first day here.

“The matter is not in our hands,” said an official as he washed his hands off the incident. Meanwhile, ticket sales for the World Cup got under way with the online service being launched at a function here in which the first ticket was presented to Delhi CM Sheila Dixit.

It was another matter that it was a struggle to complete a transaction on the site. Ironically, at times it showed the tickets booked by one as those of the IPL, which has agreed to adjust its schedule for March 13 (the day of the final of the hockey World Cup) on a request from the organisers.

The prices for the tickets start from Rs100 per day (three matches) for the early stages in the general enclosure, with tickets for better stands priced at Rs500, Rs1,000 and Rs5,000. The prices for tickets to the final are 50 per cent higher.