GUWAHATI, Oct 23 - While the city witnessed a spectacular match with over 600 runs being scored on Sunday, mediapersons from different parts of the country covering the 1st India-West Indies ODI here were apparently unhappy with the overall facilities at the venue.
Not only there remain questions on the hospitality offered to the journalists who stayed up to 12 hours but also on the location of the media centre which had been shifted away from its earlier wicket-to-wicket position. This was the second international match at the venue after the T20 against Australia last year.
Mediapersons who entered the stadium at around 11 am were served a packet of snacks at around 4 pm after some journalists screamed at the ACA representatives in the media centre. The persons liaising the journalists in the media centre could have supplied lunch packets at around 2 pm when thousands of general spectators sitting in the adjacent enclosures were provided heavy lunch. As a result, the mediapersons had to work in hunger and thirst.
�It is absolutely not done. We don�t expect something extraordinary, it is as if they have decided to ignore us. It is inhuman to leave mediapersons literally starving when the ACA could afford complimentary lunch and snacks to spectators in the boxes adjacent to the media centre. We are not paupers eyeing free food. But there was no arrangement inside the stadium from where we could buy food without hampering our work,� said a visiting journalist who is associated with a leading national daily.
�It is ridiculous that the ACA is eyeing to host Test matches when it cannot host a T20 or an ODI properly,� he added.
However, the ACA secretary Pradip Buragohain thanked the crowd, various departments of the State Government, BCCI officials for their support in holding the ODI match on Sunday successfully.
