The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Peanuts for curators

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Oct 02, 2007
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Sport - Cricket

Peanuts for curators

KOCHI: It’s the richest cricket board in the world. And the BCCI hands out Porsche cars, heavy pay-cheques and cash awards for its stars.

Flashy cars are on duty and five star hotels are packed when the big cricket circus comes to town.

But do you know how much the curators, our backstage stars who slog day and night, often fighting the rain and a merciless sun, get?

“I get Rs. 400 per day, nothing more,” said P.V. Ramachandran, the Chief Curator for the Kochi ODI, who has been working at the Nehru Stadium here for more than a month.

The labourers at the stadium who do the rolling and water the ground, get Rs. 300 per day and the Kerala Cricket Association curator, just a hundred more.

“Crores of rupees are being spent in this game but nobody bothers about us,” said the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association curator K. Parthasarathy who has been in the ‘profession’ for nearly two decades.

His situation is a lot better, though it is just peanuts when you compare it with what our Ranji Trophy cricketers get every season.

“We’re always under pressure, we have to fight fickle weather and if the wicket is bad, everyone is quick to blame us,” said the Chennai-based Parthasarathy. It’s time the BCCI and the State associations turned a little generous to the backstage men. — Principal Correspondent

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