North Sound (Antigua): India and all other teams at this 2024 T20 World Cup are working at breakneck speed to keep up with the tight schedule of matches at the business end of the marquee tournament.
With travel in the Caribbean being a nightmare of cancelled flights, no availabilities and worst, being booked on airlines that cancel and not refund, it is in good stead that the teams are on charters which have some stability and reliability.
The Indian team, for example, checked out of their hotel in Barbados, loaded their bus to the stadium with their baggage, played their first Super 8 match against Afghanistan, rushed back to the bus which took them to the airport straight from the stadium, to fly to Antigua where they play Bangladesh a day later.
They announced a practice session at Antigua the next morning! Phew! Head coach Rahul Dravid, however, says such schedules can't be avoided and quick adaptability has been key in this tournament co-hosted by America and Caribbean nations.
Surya Kumar Yadav put up a brave defence of this killing schedule the other day, to say that he, and the other players, are professionals who know how to recuperate from such flying stress.
India plays three Super 8 matches and a semifinal within just eight days and travels through four destinations across the ocean to reach the Final at Barbados. All Super 8 matches are just one day apart and at different Caribbean nations. India gets just one day extra for the semifinal with the usual one-day gap between the semifinal and the final if they reach the final frontier.
Taking into consideration such a killing schedule, the ICC has organised the post-match and next pre-match press conferences in the same window, with an embargo on the latter.
For the travelling media, however, the flying schedules, the non-availability of flights to India-playing destinations, and sudden cancellations have come as a bolt from the blue oceans around them. The ICC, in a bid to help the journalists reach the destinations to cover the event, has been working overtime with the local airlines to somehow get them in on left-over charter seats, if any.
Most of the Indian media has spent hours trying to get the flight to Guyana where India is likely to play its semifinal, and back to Barbados for the Final, some even going back to Miami and Vancouver to reach Georgetown internationally and a super high cost! Some have been conned by paying high-cost flights to Antigua where India plays Bangladesh, through travel sites which cancel the flight without notice and then do not pay the refund, seeking instead a refund handling fee for a request that may not be honoured by the airline concerned.
For others, with specified budgets and sold-out local airlines, there’s a media hub set up at Barbados to peep into matches, and press conferences and catch the matches live but not from the ground.
