India’s win over Kuwait today at the Asian Basketball Confederation (ABC) Championships at Harbin, China, is even more creditable given the team’s chaotic build-up. The Indians arrived today at the tournament venue just two hours before their match, and following a 32-hour journey from New Delhi.Their scheduled Saturday-night flight to Tokyo developed a snag and eventually took off on Sunday. When it touched down at Narita past midnight, the connecting flight to Beijing had taken off. The team eventually arrived in Beijing late last night to near-freezing conditions, spent the night there and left for Harbin this morning.It then made straight for the venue to play the first match, which was rescheduled to noon instead of 10 a.m. That came about after lengthy negotiations between Basketball Federation of India secretary-general Harish Sharma and the organisers.‘‘ABC rules permit teams reaching the venue two days before the start of the championship. They agreed to the postpone the match but only by two hours because in the 16-team format, it is difficult to reschedule matches as it involves rescheduling telecast timings by various satellite channels’’, Sharma said.Could the delay have been avoided? Sharma said that he’d spoken to Balmer Lawrie, the government ticketing agency, to allow endorsements in some other flight but they refused.At Balmer Lawrie, Praveen Khuller, in charge of Sports Ministry ticketing, said the problem was unforeseen and by the time she’d got the message it was too late for her to get an endorsement done for another flight.This isn’t the first time a team has suffered because of the national carrier. Last year, some Indian team members returning from the Manchester Commonwealth Games were left stranded as the bus to pick up the athletes did not turn up. Eventually, Games organisers helped them reach Heathrow in time.Similarly, pistol shooter Samresh Jung and team members lost their baggage, including their guns, and Jung shot with a borrowed gun in the World Cup competition in France.
