IPL, Indaba overlap
26 March 2009, 11:46
Durban will not be able to host any Indian Premier League games during the four-day Indaba Conference which runs from May 9-12 because there will be no hotel rooms available in the city.
Fedhasa chairperson Gerhard Patzer, who is also general manager of the Hilton Hotel, on Wednesday sounded a warning to the IPL organisers not to schedule any matches in Durban for that period.
"We would like to alert you to the fact that the Indaba Conference takes place from May 9-12. During these four days you will find no hotel rooms available in the city. This should be taken into consideration when making the game schedule.
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Fedhasa chairperson Gerhard Patzer, who is also general manager of the Hilton Hotel, on Wednesday sounded a warning to the IPL organisers not to schedule any matches in Durban for that period.
"We would like to alert you to the fact that the Indaba Conference takes place from May 9-12. During these four days you will find no hotel rooms available in the city. This should be taken into consideration when making the game schedule.
"My suggestion as the chairman of Fedhasa is that matches during these four days be scheduled for outside Durban."
The lucrative money-spinning 2009 IPL, which is filled with glitz and glamour, is scheduled to start on April 18 in Cape Town and runs for five weeks.
The games will be spread around the country, but IPL organisers were left stumped when all eight teams requested they be based in Durban.
Instead organisers scheduled each at the six venues they will use for the 59-game programme.
"When the owners of all eight teams were asked where they would like to be based, everyone - I mean all eight teams - said they wanted to be based in Durban," said Gerald Majola, CE of Cricket SA.
"This to me is an amazing vote of confidence for the city of Durban. We - along with Lalit Modi of the IPL - were in a predicament when we received these replies. We had to think long and hard before consensus was reached that there would be no 'home' for any of the teams."
Majola said the IPL officials went into "over-drive" as their staff started arriving from Mumbai early on Wednesday: "We have made office space available for them at our headquarters at the Wanderers - We are offering them all the assistance possible for the smooth running of the IPL tournament."
- This article was originally published on page 1 of The Daily News on March 26, 2009
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