Disorder continues to dog Hockey World Cup

The chaos and the confusion continues. If one thought things would improve once the event started, he was grossly mistaken. If it was bad outside, it was worse inside.

It took an hour of struggle to enter the stadium. The cops hadn’t been informed of the time to let the media in. Once you enter, you are not allowed to come out; you can’t even move out to make a phone call.

To add to it, there was no power in the enclosure for the major part of the evening, not even in the media centre. The passing-the-buck trend continued unabated, with one group blaming the other. And when the problem could not be solved, the people concerned made a vanishing act. One can only pray for sanity to prevail in the days to come.

The faux pas was not confined off the field; things happened on-field too. The sprinkler was the first to malfunction, with water falling everywhere except where it needed to.

The poor cameramen, sitting beside the pitch, were at the receiving end of the water canon, particularly their cameras. The technical officials even had to take the help of the good old water pipe to wet the dry areas of the pitch.

Hurt umpire holds up play

We have heard of matches being stopped when players get injured. But ever heard of a match being stopped because of umpire getting injured? That rare thing happened during the first match between Spain and South Africa.

The play had to be stopped for nearly 10 minutes when umpire Colin Hutchinson reacted late to a rasping shot and was struck on his leg. When the painkilling sprays failed to work, reserve umpire Amarjit Singh of Malaysia had to step in to complete the match.