The Indian cricket team's 'strategy' to distance itself from the travelling media contingent here is getting ridiculous with each passing day
A view from a room at the Heritage Hotel in Auckland
Auckland: The Indian cricket team's 'strategy' to distance itself from the travelling media contingent here is getting ridiculous with each passing day.
A view from a room at the Heritage Hotel in Auckland. Pic/Getty Images
As though media manager Dr RN Baba's one-line, dictator-like emails clarifying that there will be 'no media activity' almost everyday wasn't enough, the team management, it is learnt, has also asked their hotel security staff to keep journalists off their premises.
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The security staff at the Heritage Hotel here, where the team just moved two days back, was yesterday seen chasing away print and television reporters from the road outside their premises.
Reporters trying to get in were told by the hotel's security manager Stu Mason that they have "strict orders from the Indian team management not to allow journalists inside the hotel."
Astonishingly, the TV crew were on the opposite side of the road but hotel staff insisted they leave, claiming that they could not film the hotel even from outside as it was "private property."
Mason went on to threaten a journalist that if he tried to make his way into the hotel again, he would issue a trespass notice against him. The journalist, by now frustrated, asked what if he wanted to go in for a cup of coffee. "Even that's not allowed for journalists," said Mason.