Army Escorts everywhere in india for the Wellington Phoenix
We’ve arrived in Imphal in the northeast of India. It’s an area of social unrest right now and the army are everywhere. The team can’t go anywhere without jeep-loads of soldiers front and back and even at practice today the soldiers surround the perimeter.
The temperature is 29 degrees but its drier than back down in Delhi or Kolkata so the heat’s not so suffocating. But now the bad news – the pitch for tomorrow’s game (Friday 8.30pm NZ time) is like corrugated concrete and frankly a danger to the players.
Crap pitch for the Phoenix game
They will water it tonight to see if it can be made more humane but I don’t fancy their chances.
Ironically the monsoon rains are forecast for tomorrow as well but that would turn the pitch into a mudbath so at best it will be soft and not that playable, at worst it will still be like concrete and not really able to be played.
There’s talk that we’ll write off Imphal and move on early to Shillong where there’s a new artificial pitch where we could get three games in anyway.
Welcome to India!
You can see the latest blog post on the Phoenix here
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