For SA, test begins at Mumbai airport

MUMBAI, FEB 17: The former South African cricket coach Bob Woolmer had forewarned HansieCronje and his men about the conditions in India. Woolmer, the Kanpur-born Englishman, known for his precision gameplans had been a vital cog in South Africa’s successes in international cricket. He wasn’t way off target this time round too. The South African team which landed at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai last night at 2340 hours had to wait for more than two hours to get their luggage cleared from the terminal. And by the time they made it to the hotel in south Mumbai, it was way beyond 0300 hrs on Thursday. The testing times for the visitors had begun even before they had stepped on the cricketing field!

Add to it the bedlam created by mediapersons outside terminal where televison crews and photographers almost came to blows while trying to `capture’ the visitors. Such scenarios have become a routine affair at the airport whenever an international cricket team arrives and that includes the Indian team too.

Neither the airport authorities or the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) are interested in finding solution to such ugly episodes. In fact, all that the security and the airport officials indulge in is to crowdaround the cricketers so that they are featured the images beamed out on television the next day or on the newspapers.

Sample what Woolmer’s advice was to the first-timers to India: “An abiding memory of is the sheer chaos on the roads and the wonder that there are not more accidents. It would seem that in order to pass the Indian driving test, you would have to drive with your hands firmly attached to the horn _ and because cows are sacred in the Hindu religion, you stop as they walk across the road. This sometimes can take a long time…” How prophetic!