Paddlers to wrestle in Balewadi mess

There is no one to explain why the hall’s wooden flooring has been allowed to rot. Given its present condition, it is doubtful whether the floors can take the weight of any major event, let alone a championship featuring some of Asia’s best. Nobody seems to have paid any heed to the maintenance aspect. And about that, there seems to be no doubt.

What is even more shocking is the disclosure that an annual Rs one crore had been kept aside by the State government for maintenance of the Balewadi stadium (which includes water and electricity). And this is a senior official’s own admission.

Salima Khan, deputy director of Sports and Officer on Special Duty at the stadium, says the roof was damaged in a storm in May, 1996. She claims the order for repairs had been placed with the State Government but since the sanction “has just come (it came in September this year)” the roof could not be repaired in time for the Asian Table Tennis meet.

But someone must have known that the life of the asbestos roofing is just four years? Why wait for nature to make things move? “We did our bit. It was left to the higher-ups to expedite the issue,” she says. “There are just five of us here. We are doing our best.”

Ironically, it was the commissioning of this sports complex that earned Pune the sobriquet Sports City for Balewadi’s capacity to host different events under one roof. But today, like many other sporting structures, it is being allowed to decay. In urgent need of repairs but little or no sign of action.

As far as the Asian TT Championship is concerned, the venue has been shifted to the wrestling hall in the complex. It is now upto Dhanraj Choudhary of the Table Tennis Federation of India who, along with members of the Poona & the State Table Tennis Associations, is working frantically to try and meet the deadline — the tournament gets underway on Friday.

The lighting, Chaudhary says is just enough (1000 lux) for the table tennis meet. The matches will be played on four Stag tables of international standard with Nittaku orange balls.

So we will now have forty paddlers — 20 men and 20 women — wrestling for the honours in a hall which was originally designed to attract the best from Mongolia.