Boria Majumdar in London
A tour isn’t only about covering games. The behind-the-scenes is as much the story as the matches themselves. These stories are sometimes dark and sometimes funny. Whichever way you look at them, they are part of your diary.
It started the day my colleagues landed in Birmingham. While Gargi missed her connection from Dubai to Birmingham with the war in the Middle East delaying flights, others in the team missed the coach from Birmingham to Leeds. As if this wasn’t enough, Amit Shah misplaced the apartment keys (one of the three apartments that we were using) in Birmingham! Needless to say, it cost us a hefty penalty.
You’d imagine that the above is enough for one tour. Not so in RevSportz. Back to Subhayan now. On the way to the London apartment, he decides to leave his wallet in the Uber cab. After much effort, it was found. In all his joy of having saved the day, he left his powerbank on his next Uber ride. “At least it is the powerbank and not my wallet,” is his consolation to himself.
How could Gargi be left behind! She met her cousin in Birmingham and over dinner, left her gold earrings in the restaurant. Why would one even remove them, Sharmistha asked. Frankly, none of us have the answer to this question. We have just heard back that they have been found and that should settle it.
Each day when I wake up, I tend to think what’s next. Sample this. We had made bookings for the team well in advance. On the day we reached London, Booking.com decides to let us know that one of the bookings had been cancelled. We get a message on WhatsApp that there is a plumbing issue.
Frankly, this is a new racket. It is the third time in two weeks that we have heard the same excuse. First Birmingham, then Manchester and finally London. Everywhere there is a plumbing issue. What we think is they have now found takers at far higher rates, so they needed to cancel a booking made months back. Against such racketeering, you are actually powerless when you are using sites like Booking.com.
When I get the many messages congratulating us for the scale and depth of our coverage, I tend to think people should also know what really goes on backstage. More grey hairs, some nightmarish moments and frustration and at the end of it, there is this ‘all’s well that ends well’ smile.
Each day at RevSportz is an event and each one of us is living the experience. We love what we do and we do what we love. That’s what keeps us going, all of the above stupidity notwithstanding.
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