It was on my list of “things to do before I turn 20”, and something that I admit, is quite embarrassing to not have done in the 19 years of my life. Well I am an Indian and what is the uniting factor between every Indian, be it a Hindu or Muslim, a teen or an adult, a saas or a bahu? Yes, I’m talking about cricket. The IPL T20 to be precise. Never before have I been to a stadium to watch a match as Iv’e never been much into the game, but everything changed once the IPL had started. I noticed people going gaga over it. Never before has anything this glamorous happened to cricket. The cheerleaders, the celebrity supporters, the sponsors, big money, the page 3 after-parties everything about it yelled “hawt”!
So, I decided to see what the buzz was all about. Now, I’m from Mumbai, but I support the Royal Challengers Bangalore (It’s all in the name baby!). There was a match held at the newly made Jamtha stadium in Nagpur between RCB and Deccan Chargers and a few friends and I decided to get tickets for it. Due to lack of co-ordination and part laziness on our parts, we couldn’t buy the tickets beforehand, so we arrived at the stadium an hour before the commencement of the match. We landed up paying 50 rupees extra to get our hands on tickets as the half empty stadium was ‘sold out’.
I won’t divulge more details of the match as I’m sure most of you people might have either seen it on the television or read about it in the newspaper. But for me, overall, my 1st time was disappointing. We got crappy seats, no camera to capture the moments and on top of that we were the only away supporters in a stadium filled with the colours of the home team. After the match was over, we were stuck in an hour long traffic jam in the parking lot itself with dust flying around and no air conditioning in the car. But the cherry on the cake, was seeing my team lose.
Nevertheless I got to see a spectacular innings by my favorite player, Rahul Dravid and I also got a free flag! So yeah, the match was totally worth it. My 1st cricketing experience wasn’t up to my expectations but I’m sure I’ll be back for more!
The writer is a sub-editor of Youth Ki Awaaz.