India is a nation where people worship cricketers as god and follow the game as religion. However, such cricket frenzy is creating troubles for the Police Control Room of Noida and the reason is the ongoing cricketing extravanganza -- Indian Premiere League.
These days, the operators at Noida's two PCRs are, reportedly, dealing with an added unwanted responsibility of telling match score to the callers!
As per reports in media, the operators are getting 8-10 calls per match from over-excited cricket fans asking for the score. Out of these calls, only few callers sound genuine while others are mostly fooling around, asserted the operators.
"We get calls during the games, particularly during the evening games. People ask questions like 'score kya hua hai?', or 'iss player ke kitne run ho gaye?' There is no fixed number of calls for every match. But during some games, we get 8-10 such calls, mostly from the same people. Obviously log mazaak karte hain. Aaj kal toh sabke paas internet hai, score toh kahin se bhi pata chal sakta hai. Agar TV nahi bhi hai toh score pata chal jayega. Humein kyun call karke pareshan karte hain?" an operator is quoted as saying by the leading daily.
Interestingly, when Virat Kohli plays well, the number of calls ringing in the PCR office gets increased by many folds.
"It differs from game to game, but it is maximum when Virat Kohli's team is playing," said an operator to the daily.
And if Kohli is batting well, tab toh aur bhi zyaada." The fact that Kohli has been playing well throughout the tournament has meant that PCR operators have had their hands full responding to questions like "Virat ki half-century ho gayi kya?"
When there is a power cut, the number of calls increases further, said the report.
However, the PCR operators have adopted a specified procedure to deal with such calls.
“For the genuine ones, we simply tell them the score. If we feel that the other person is a miscreant, we reprimand them and tell them we will track their number and have them brought in for wasting our time.”
Reportedly, when situation goes out of control, the police team even calls back the offenders and threatens them of legal attention. They have even registered FIRs and got SIMs blocked for wasting time of the PCR operators.
