May 4, 2008

IPL at Chinnaswami Stadium

IPL is the buzz these days. It may be because of the money that has been poured in, or the 100% guaranteed entertainment. At least I enjoy watching these games for the guaranteed fun.

I'm in Bangalore for the past 2.5 years and I haven't used this opportunity to watch a live match in the stadium. But I didn't want to miss this anymore. Since IPL T20 being a sure entertainer we set out to watch one. Being a native a Tamil Nadu, the obvious choice would be to watch the match between Chennai (Super Kings) and Bangalore (Royal Challengers).
- Chennai Super Kings
- Bangalore Royal Challengers

Watching a match in the stadium is much more different than watching it on a Television. The lively, energetic and sometimes boisterous crowd is one of the cogent reasons to witness a match in the stadium. Sometimes you ignore the actual match to get involved in some activities that happens in the stadium stands like the Mexican wave, etc.,That too in our case, the clash was between Chennai and Bangalore (the so called deadly-rivals in the water dispute) and with equal number of supporters for both the squads added the fun factor. During the final overs of the Bangalore innings, when they were loosing wickets in haste, the tamil crowd acclaimed Super Kings with slogans, which remained me of my college days.

Though Bangalore gave a big fight, they were unfortunate to lose the game. We witnessed great batting skills from MS Dhoni, Ross Taylor and Wasim Jaffer and an awesome bowling spell from Dale Steyn, though he stumbled in his last over with Dhoni. We were able to see players Kallis, Murali, Ntini and Hussey and drummer Sivamani in a very close proximity. To recapitulate, it is a great fun to watch a match in the stadium.

3 comments:

SANKAR SALVADY said...

I always thought U watched a match in bangalore ...remember u telling that.. an India-Australia match..

i can imagine how heated up it would have been, given the circumstances (with Hogenkal dam issue) !!

Arun Ponniah Sethuramalingam said...

@ Sankar

No this is the first time. Yeah it is true that initially people were even reluctant to watch this match in the stadium, because of these political issues. To my surprise, I even saw few people waving pro-K flags in the stands.

Jil Jil Ramamani said...

the clincher was when someone asked Mallya, ur teams gone for a toss, losses eh? And Mallya replied, 'Look at the sleeves of Rajasthan Royals.'

;)