In the February this year I had decided to tour Bangalore and also watch the WTA Bangalore Open in the process. Many of my friends who had shown interest in the trip at the last minute had dropped out due to some vague reasons but I continued with my plans for the trip. So I decided to travel through a bus rather than a train as it appeared much safer travel and a time saving one too. So my travel started on February 13 evening at a time when an India Vs Pakistan Cricket match was going on with Dhoni in full flow. Reached Bangalore early morning where I checked into a Hotel nearby to the KSLTA Tennis Stadium which I booked through Internet.
I had heard so much about Bangalore in the recent past that it created an image of some type of model city in India and so from that point of view I was disappointed as it seemed much similar to any other Indian City. In fact, Hyderabad seemed to be much cleaner and buzzing with activity but its my affinity towards Hyderabad taking over I guess.
I went to watch the matches on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The tickets were priced at Rs 100,200 & 500. Unlike from the Website image where you got the impression that only one court (middle one) would be used among the three courts in the stadium, all the three courts were used separated by advertised barricades. So you had 3 matches going on side by side. So if you had purchased the Rs 100 ticket, you would get to watch only only one match as it had the side view with barricades blocking the view of the two other courts. With Rs 200 ticket, if you managed to get a seat to edge of the leading of the Rs 500 ticket ... you could get a view of the one of the side court and the middle court and with the Rs 500 ticket, you could get a view of the all the three courts as you placed with a middle view.Coming to the Organizing part, they got the major one right i.e., keeping tickets instead of free entry (which I was so against last year). They had good thorough checks and dealt with any sort of crowd trouble at the earliest. Like in one of the matches when a section of the crowd started making catcalls, the organizers were quick to send people to that section to control them. But I think its not fair to compare Hyd with Bangalore, as the crowd was nowhere near as much as Hyd at least on the two days I watched. It wouldn't have been that easy to control the crowd behavior if the stadium was packed. The other thing in their favour was that all the matches were played on the stadium court itself unlike in Hyderabad where you had crowd chasing the players after they were coming out from the outside court matches causing bit of discomfort. But thumbs up to the organizing part but would like to add they was nowhere as much crowd as there was in Hyderabad and more importantly, it was priced unlike in Hyderabad where the Govt forced them to keep it free.
On Sania's game, I don't know much about service mechanism
and all that stuff but this time last year I was pretty confident with regards to Sania's serve as I felt it had much more pace and more importantly depth. But with the new service action, I just don't get the same feeling with either pace or depth. Its turned to like I expect her to be broken in every service game and any hold is like a bonus while it was the opposite last year.Coming to crowd response, frankly I expected much lower turnout with the really depleted entry field. Even though the crowd was mainly for Sania's matches but quite a few of them stayed back for other matches unlike in Hyderabad last year where you had even players like Navratilova was made to play in front of mostly empty stands. But I think this was more due to people made to pay money here and so they want to get the most out of it unlike in Hyderabad where they just had to muscle their way through in and walkout anytime they want as no money was charged. Afternoon matches had hardly any spectators other than the organizers which was a bit disappointing.
I uploaded the pictures I had taken there onto my new photo webpage http://vishnu913.photosnaps.org.uk/
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