Being a Fan of cricket and also die Hard Fan of Rahul Dravid, D Wall, this time I had decided to watch the match LIVE, and that too, if possible, of RCB.
My younger brother, Pranav, is also a Huge fan of Jammy and my cousins follow Sachin, the Little master, badly. When all of us decided to go for IPL match and were going through the schedule, unanimously we decided to watch the encounter-RCB v/s MI……….reason as you know……we would be able to see our Heroes playing live, in front of us.
Once this decision was done, we started of with ticket booking. And thanks to Online ticket booking through which we got our seats booked in just few clicks. So, half of the work, of ticket booking, was done by my cousins, Mandar and Madan. The remaining work, of logistics, was pending, which I completed couple of days prior to the match. So we all (8 people) were set to go for the match.
Now we started doing some more preparations for the match. And here was a surprise for me. My wife, Anagha, gifted me the Jersey of RCB. That’s great! With Jersey for myself I was done from my side. The next day, Pranav purchased RCB jersey for himself. Saturday morning, the match day, my cousins went for hunt for MI jersey and mission was successful for them. Even Bhargav, my nephew, got MI jersey. Pranav did the placards for the match. One for Sachin and One for D Wall.
We started @ around 2:30pm. Since I was very much worried about the roads and the flyovers of Mumbai, I got detail route to the stadium and landmarks en route. Thanks to Google maps! Till Vashi, route was familiar but then we started taking help of taxivallas for confirming the route. Surprisingly, all taxivalls answered us in HINDI; we were asking them in MARATHI though. :~( As we came near to stadium everybody got charged up. It was great feeling. We searched for the parking slot, parked the vehicle, gave some instructions to driver and went off for Pet-Puja.
Having fuelled ourselves sufficiently, quickly we went to the entrance of the stadium. Going through the security checks, we entered the stadium. OH DEAR, that was amazing atmosphere I had ever experienced. We got our faces painted and quickly got seated on our seats. Lush green outfield, stadium full of spectators, everybody cheering for Sachin………WOW....…it was awesome. (And to our surprise, RCB cheerleaders were right in front of us….oh la la la le o……). What an atmosphere. On that day, I experienced the meaning of “Atmosphere is electrifying”
MI won the toss and batted first and put modest total on board.Finally Kallis, Uthappa made the win easy for RCB. Dravid couldn't get the chance for batting, but we witnessed the stunning catch taken by him @ Mid-wicket.
As the match finished and we were going out of the stadium, at that time Madan noticed that the door to the stadium was opened. We walked on the outfield, felt the dew on it. when we were @ MI's dug-out we could get the snaps of Dhaval Kulkarni.And then we were stunned when we took Jonty Rhodes autograph.
Finally we came out of the stadium and went to Marine Drive.Had some Pet-puja there. even @ 1AM there was traffic on road and lot of people were out on marine drive. "This City never sleeps"....Really true........
Then it was a journey back home with most of the members sleeping and we had to keep ourself awake for the sake of driver .... It was @ 4:30 in the morning when we returned.
Overall it was Fantastic experience of IPL. And I must say, every cricket FAN must have this kind of experience in his pocket.........at least Once.
