COLOMBO, December 30: The Sri Lankan cricket team manager, Duleep Mendis has complained of degrading living conditions in ``inferior hotels'', during the just-concluded Indian tour, specially at Goa, where his team played the last of its three One-Day Internationals.``This has been a troublesome tour right from the start. We had to put up in inferior hotels and as for umpiring I don't have any thing to say.
Fortunately people in Sri Lanka were able to see it on television,'' Mendis was quoted as saying in a local newspaper, Island.
Mendis said, ``i am not saying that we need luxuries. We can not expect things to be rosy all the time. But what can we do when we don't have the basic requirements.''
The same newspaper has quoted an unnamed Sri Lankan cricketer as saying that he found bird droppings in his tea served at the hotel where the team had stayed in Goa. The newspaper which has a pronounced anti-Indian editorial policy today featured it as lead story on its sport page saying `Rat droppings
found in tour member's tea infuriated Sri Lankans likely to call for tour scrutiny'.
``The team is scheduled to leave India today after second segment that featured three One-Day Internationals, but the mental trauma over sub-standard accommodation and poor umpiring could take precedence over match results ,'' it said.
The newspapers here in general wrote scathing pieces against umpiring in Goa especially the lapses that went against their team while maintaining convenient silence over crucial umpiring mistakes that went against the Indians.
Media here ridiculed umpire Prof Sharma's `comic' gesture of raising his hand to declare the Indian opener Ajay Jadeja out not only to withdraw it later to scratch his hat, but members of large Indian expatriate community point out that Sri Lanka too benefited from umpire Hariharan's refusal to adjudge Aravinda de Silva out after he was caught behind at a crucial stage of the match.
Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
