This post is a brief account of my experience as a spectator in the IPL match between Bangalore Royal Challengers and Delhi Daredevils held on 19th May 2008 at Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore.

Initial Hickup: I had left office early to reach Chinnaswamy stadium as you never know with Bangalore traffic. I was skeptical whether we would have a game at all with all those rains on that day and if at all it stopped raining, whether we will have a full match. Well, when me and my friend were inside the stadium, early birds had already occupied strategic positions i.e seats!

Shaan Show and the Laser Show: Fortunately, rain had stopped around 6 PM and that was precisely the time when Bollywood singing sensation Shaan’s programme will start. Shankar Prasad, well known face of the Bengaluru Doordarshana Kendra was the host of the show. He began with his impeccable voice addressing the crowd both in English and Kannada, “Ladies and gentlemen”, “Mahileyere mattu Mahaneeyare” respectively and told Shaan will be entertaining us with bollywood numbers and some Kannada songs too. Shaan dressed in white coat and white pants entered the stage SRK style (Don theme), with the thunderous applause and began his bollywood numbers with ‘Mai Hun Don’. ‘Chand Sifarish’, ‘Do you want a partner’, ‘Jab se tera naina’, ‘Dekho Dekho Kya Yeh Pedh hai’ followed. He also sang one Kannada song – ‘Eno Onthara’ from ‘Hudugaata’. He ended his show with his ever green album melody ‘Tanha Dil’ wishing the home team all the best, telling repeatedly that he would be lucky for the team but that was not to be. After Shaan’s show, Laser Show followed. Lasers with background score filled the entire stadium with exclamations from the audience. It was really awesome.

Toss and the Star Entry: Stadium does look big when you watch in TV but when you were in middle of the action here, it seems a small place comparable to a decent school ground, where you would have played cricket! We really missed the binoculars as without them you would be waiting for the giant screen replays to watch what exactly happened in the previous delivery. Well at around 7 30, Sunil Gavaskar made his entry to the ground with 2 captains – Dravid and Sehwag. Sehwag called it right. When asked about the match Dravid fancied his team’s chances of spoiling somebody’s party as his team was almost out of the tournament. Soon after the toss was over and match was about to begin, Kannada actors Upendra and Ramya were up on stage. Ramya began with her somewhat foreign accent Kannada saying ‘Namaskaara Bengaluru ‘ and Upendra greeting which he followed up with his own style dialogue ‘Fouru Sixu Ok, Kuttodu Yaake!’ indicating how Bangalore team was adapted to defending while batting rather than hit the ball t20 style and then they jogged around the ground saying ‘Cheers to Live’, making the crowd stand up and take notice of their presence.

Cheerleaders: Toss time also marked the entry of much debated cheerleaders to the stadium. They first performed in the middle of the ground, then jogging round the ground cheering the audience and finally to settle down at the 3 podiums destined for them. Needless to say all these events were received with high volume cheers from the crowd gathered. Cameras clicked, videos shot and the attention turned to one side of the ground. Cheerleaders used to dance for English, Hindi and Kannada songs whenever the home team hit 4’s and 6’s or took wickets. But they were left with plenty of spare time without work as the home team hit boundaries in patches and took only half of the Delhi team out. Check out the Redskins cheerleaders performance video here.

Match and the Audience: Not terribly disappointed by the home team’s performances in earlier games, crowd cheered the team to lift their game up. Posters, Banners filled the crowd space but only that cameramen were not interested in any of these. Posters created by me like – ‘Put the Bang back ‘Bang’alore’, ‘Dravid V R With U’, ‘Don’t Mis-bah-L’, ‘Go 4 Hit Swamy’(for Srivatsa Goswamy, the debutant), ‘White Wash Delhi’(for Cameroon White) remained visible to the minority of McDowells’ Best View(Stand A, where we had seated) people! Also, these posters were of not much use after some time as Dravid, Goswamy, White were on their way to pavilion after I prepared these posters, with the exception of Mis-bah and Goswamy(who had a good outing on that day). Well, cameraman was more interested and focused on the airhostesses who had landed upon the KSCA ground on that day!

The Live Action: There are no live commentaries in the stadium; how can it be, with the audience noise level crossing several decibels. 2 giant screens provided us the status of the match as we were interested in the stats occasionally. But the lack of hard hitters in Dravid’s team made the match less T20. Misbah’s last over fireworks to produce 24 runs was a treat to watch. Anyway, crowd enthusiasm made up for this and evey four and six was cheered whole heartedly by the audience and being among this bunch gives yourself a different kind of experience altogether. Like waiting for the third umpires decision and after his verdict the cheer; you have to be in the crowd to experience that. Well, nowadays they don’t show action replays to get our own versions of verdicts, thus avoiding controversies. First half of the match was Ok. Though Bangalore kept loosing wickets, 19 year old wicket keeper Srivatsa Goswamy provided complete entertainment, who finally perished trying to go over the top. But then Misbah was there to play his best IPL innings so far. On the way he also did a Inzamam-ul-Haq when he got involved in 2 of the runouts. 2nd part of the match was interesting only to the Delhi crowd as Sehwag and Gambhir hit boundaries after boundaries most of the times never bothering to run. But then Delhi also had their anxious moments; once the openers were out they lost 3 quick wickets courtesy Kumble and Steyn making the crowd interested in the match. But soon enthusiasm died as Delhi roped home comfortably winning the match by 5 wickets. In the meantime in the 2nd half, when match was dull, somebody from the crowd in McDowells Best View(Stand C), started dancing and all the attention turned there! After the match was over, we did not wait for the presentation ceremony to get over and were on our way back home at around 11 30 PM, discussing had it not been a huge first wicket partnership for Delhi, we would have possibly won it!

- Raveesh

Cross posted at my personal blog.