It is difficult being an Indian cricket journalist in India. Really difficult. And if you are a television journalist, the difficulties multiply manifold. With the Indian team playing the way they are, it is only natural that the television channel you work for will want you to do live crosses back to India during the game. These live crosses number between three and four a day and add to the designated prime time shows between 7pm and 10.30 pm in India.

Just when you come out for a live cross outside of the ground, for rights-holding reasons you aren?t permitted on the venue premises, you are exposed to the idiosyncrasies of drunken fans. Some of them go to the extent of trying to undress in front of the camera and also get aggressive on occasions. Journalists have also come to face the exact situation that prompted Virat Kohli to do the flip at Sydney. While there is no defense of such a gesture, there is enough provocation on offer to force you to lose your head. Especially when you are doing a live broadcast and are constrained by the fact that when you are live on camera such obscene acts can result in a rush of blood on occasions. The problems multiply if you have a woman journalist covering the tour with you. She is inevitably the target. Working late in the evening has become challenging and physically unsafe.

With the time difference between Australia and India accentuating the problems mentioned above, journalists subjected to assault in the hands of drunken fans are becoming a regular feature Down Under. These fans scream obscenities into the camera, try and physically manhandle the journalists on and often forcibly enters the camera frame to scream into the microphone. And the problem is it is almost impossible to report them to the police because you are busy working. By the time the live cross ends or the show finishes they would have disappeared from the scene of action.

Several things have come out of these experiences in Australia. For example, it is time for cricket administrators to start thinking of designated live cross areas for non-rights broadcasters during the match hours. These areas are to be manned by security guards to ensure incidents of assault don?t happen for journalists to work in peace. Secondly, these must be designated areas where non-rights holding broadcasters can dump their equipment and come back to during their shows in the evening. This will mean they are not exposed to the whims of fans on the roads, which are often the most dangerous of settings for violence. It has become a regular feature with me during this tour of Australia. Things turned dire last week prompting me to do my shows from the confines of my hotel room.

While I raise a problem it is also my responsibility to offer a solution. Only in this case I am bowled middle stump and don?t have a ready solution to offer. Except to say that I have felt physically unsafe and scared on occasions, there is little to do in circumstances which often turn impossible to keep a control over. While people might find it amusing from outside, I can tell you there is no amusement if you are the one facing these untoward consequences. The situations are serious enough to cause a deep sense of outrage and serve as enough provocation to force you to lose your cool.

I will conclude this column with a couple of instances of drunken fan behaviour that I was subjected to last week. In one of the days we were working well past midnight when a group of drunken fans tried to ask my lady colleague out at midnight. She was scared and the situation was finally saved by the intervention of the hotel staff. And on the second occasion a fan just jumped on me trying to enter the frame and hurled obscenities into the camera. He ended up damaging my glares and only when I threatened to call the police did he go outside of the frame to continue with his antics of gesticulating, finally undressing behind me.

The writer is a sport historian