| schema:text
| - Fact Check: Hair dryer & iron used to rescue wet pitch in IPL final? No, these old photos are from Guwahati
India Today found out that both images that went viral on Twitter are more than three years old.
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
Sponges were used during the final to dry the wet pitch in Gujarat. The viral images, however, are from Guwahati's Barsapara stadium and were taken on January 5, 2020.
World's largest cricket arena, the Narendra Modi Stadium, made headlines for all the wrong reasons during the 2023 IPL finals. The match was first rescheduled from May 28 to May 29 due to heavy showers in Ahmedabad. Then, the game was interrupted again because of rain on the reserve day, resulting in the second innings being reduced to 15 overs.
After the Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led Chennai Super Kings scored a nail-biting last-over thriller against the Gujarat Titans and won its fifth title, many on social media began criticising the Board of Control for Cricket in India and the drainage infrastructure in the "World's Largest Cricket Studium" using two photos.
The first image showed a hair dryer being used on the cricket pitch to dry it up. While sharing this, many wrote things like, "The best cricket stadium in India, Narendra Modi Stadium is dried by a hair dryer. World's richest cricket league managed by the richest cricket body can't afford a better drainage system." The other showed a clothes iron being used for the same. Archived versions of such posts can be seen here.
India Today found that both the images in question are more than three years old and from Assam.
Our Probe
We came across news reports that said groundsmen at the Narendra Modi Stadium used sponges to dry the rain-soaked pitches. Reportedly, the staff managed to apply what looked like a mixture of sawdust and green sand and then proceeded to roll over the surface and use the super sopper to speed up the process.
These reports did not mention the use of hair dryers or cloth irons; nor did the photos in them show that. However, reports published in Sportskeeda, The Tribune, and CricTracker noted the use of hair dryers in the outfield. The images used in these reports were the same as the viral ones.
Reality check of the viral images
A reverse search of the first image of a hair dryer led us to The Quint’s report from January 6, 2020, making it clear that the image was not from the 2023 IPL finals.
Per this report, India and Sri Lanka were supposed to kick off a T20 series in Guwahati, Assam, but the match was called off due to heavy rains resulting in wet patches on the pitch. There, groundsmen of the Barsapara cricket stadium used hacks such as a hair dryers and steam irons to remedy the pitch.
We also found an Outlook report from January 6, 2020, that featured both images in question.
Noted cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle also retweeted a tweet on January 5, 2020, featuring a collage of these two images and captioned, "Hopefully this won't happen again."
Therefore, it is evident that three-year-old images from Guwahati are now falsely being shared as hacks used in Gujarat's Narendra Modi Stadium during the IPL finals.
ALSO READ | This woman is a survivor of hate crime, NOT a victim of ‘love jihad’
ALSO READ | Fact Check: NATO didn’t send troops to Ukraine, old video from Afghanistan viral
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)