NEW DELHI: The capital’s reputation as a sporting venue took another beating on Sunday with surging pollution levels disrupting day two of the third Test against Sri Lanka at the Feroz Shah Kotla.
Two Lankan bowlers left the field citing breathing difficulties due to ‘poor air quality’, there were two stoppages of play and five of them wore anti pollution N95 masks – the one of the key elements of the Delhi government’s recent health advisory during peak pollution hours.
The city has been battling pollution issues since the onset of winter around the festive Diwali season, and the Delhi Half Marathon on November 19 too came under a cloud with doctors’ associations seeking legal intervention and a cancellation of the event. The marathon eventually went off without a hitch after the Delhi high court allowed it permission, but Sunday’s pollution level, spiked by calm conditions, marked by low wind speed and moisture, brought the issue back into focus.
“The pollution level is in very poor category. This is normal during this time of the year. Levels of particulate matter fluctuate depending on meteorological conditions. But I am not sure whether it is advisable to play in the open wearing masks,” a senior Delhi Pollution Control Committee official told the New Indian Express.
The city’s Air Quality Index (AQI) was 351 on a scale of 500, 15 times the WHO’s recommended toxicity maximum and classified as ‘very poor’, just a notch below the ‘severe’ category. The corresponding advisory says prolonged exposure to such air can trigger respiratory ailments.
“It (the pollution level) got extremely high at one point, we had players coming in at one point and vomiting. There were oxygen cylinders in the dressing room. It is not normal for players to suffer in that way while playing the game. From our point of view, it has to be stated that it is a very, very unique case,” the Indian Express quotes Sri Lanka coach Nic Pothas as saying.
The IE however also quoted Indian bowling coach Bharat Arun as saying, “It’s surprising because Virat Kohli, who batted for two days, didn’t feel anything like that.” Striking a dismissive note, Arun said that “pollution is something that’s there everywhere in the country,” before adding that he “felt the Sri Lankans were deliberately delaying the proceedings”.
It needs noting that Arun was only echoing the hyper-nationalistic noises coming from various worthies within Indian cricket’s power corridors, so to expect any objective reasoning would be asking for the moon. But in the wake of the disturbing visuals coming from Ferozeshah Kotla on Sunday, Javier Ceppi, the tournament director of the FIFA under-17 World Cup took to Twitter to make an important point: “You can't host sport events in Delhi from Diwali till end of Feb, at least. It is a fact. We had to accommodate our whole schedule to avoid it and others should also think about athletes’ health first.”
You can't host sport events in Delhi from Diwali till end of Feb, at least. It is a fact. We had to accommodate our whole schedule to avoid it and others should also think about athletes health first #DelhiSmog
— Javier Ceppi (@JavierCeppi) December 3, 2017
It was also a peculiar dilemma for the umpires and the match referee, the former Australian batsman David Boon, as there is no provision in the MCC manual to deal with pollution, says the report. “They are not in a position of envy, because it’s an abnormal case. There’s no precedent of the match being stopped due to pollution. In the circumstances, they handled the case well,” said Pothas.
Indian captain Virat Kohli was visibly unhappy at the stoppages in play, and eventually declared the Indian innings to get on with it. At one point, Indian coach Ravi Shastri marched onto the field to demand that the umpires get on with the game.
In the stands and online, Indian fans claimed that the Sri Lankan team was stalling play because India was batting so well, The Wire reports. Afterwards, acting president of the Board for Control of Cricket in India, CK Khanna said, “If 20,000 people in the stands did not have a problem and the Indian team did not face any issue, I wonder why the Sri Lankan team made a big fuss.”
Pertinently, it was only a couple of weeks ago that Kohli had appealed to the people of Delhi to take action the pollution.
Last November, two Ranji fixtures were abandoned due to poor air quality in the capital as well.
