Pasqualotto was put on the first flight out of India and she is still reeling. When she began the tour, she began to tweet comments about her experience. She was approached by a website -
www.alternativecricket.com - whose editors asked her to blog for them.
After two blogs a fellow cheerleader tipped off the cricketers in the Mumbai Indians team and another cricketer went straight to the chairperson of the IPL, who gave a direct order to Pasqualotto’s manager that she must be sent home. She had no time to cash traveller’s cheques or even buy a phone card.
“It’s a joke. There were cameras everywhere at these after-parties watching what they got up to. The guys treated us like pieces of meat.
We couldn’t go anywhere without the crowds mobbing us and many of the girls did not behave. But nothing I wrote was directed at any one person. I think the cricketer [an Aussie] who complained had a guilty conscience.”
In her blog, which she was forced to remove, she wrote: “The men see your face, then your boobs, then your butt, then your boobs again! As we walk all you hear is IPL, IPL with a little head jingle.
“Ol Graeme Smith will flirt with anything while his girlfriend walks behind him. The Aussies are naughty, a certain someone played kissing catches with three girls known to me and had a girlfriend back home. He told them: ‘Come back to my room, I want to cuddle!’
“These cricketers are the most loose and mischievious I have come across. I have a long while still here so I must remember my tip list: Beware of the cricketers!”
She lost a month worth of earnings, almost R8 000, and feels betrayed by her fellow cheerleaders, who she says she could easily have named for breaking the rules.
