My First Live Cricket Match

In my yesteryears I always had this intent of going and watching an International Cricket Match.All these years, I have been dreaming about watching the Indian cricket players live into the stadium from a close distance. Then came this day, 21st Jan 2007, when India was going to play West Indies, the first ODI of the series in Nagpur, Vidarbha Cricket Ground. I had bought tickets 7 days prior. The tickets were of West End Stand.

We had started preparing cardsheet and Thermocol Banners. Me, Nadeem and Anu, all three of us were passionate about the whole thing. Anu who has always been a girl charged up with lots of energy ( I don’t know how she manages to get so much energy from 3 rotis per main meal ) and was very excited about the match. She had bought the Rs 1000 tickets for which we’ll tease her for the whole of her life.We had prepared 3 posters with our huge efforts, titled “ Stay Green”, “India Go Get It” and “We want the cup”. I suggested a few more like “If u win u get cherries , or else u get Cherries with blossom”, but to my dimay it was considered too very long. Nadeem is a real hard working guy. I could see him preparing the thermocol poster all over the night before the match although he didn’t contribute much during the whole day, bad boy. Anu was probably dreaming of all possible ideas, but as usual, she didn’t put them into action. I really hate this habit of her’s. Me and Ravi share a good chemistry and so I had ensured that both of us get the adjacent seats. I went to sleep at his house so that I can get up early in the morning. You see, I need someone to shake me up to make me come of my sleep.

The alarm rang at about 6.00 in the morning. At first it was Bala bhai’s mobile, then after 5 mins it was my mobile and then rung Ravi’s mobile. I got up at 6.10 and rushed to my place. I had brought the poster titled “Stay Green”, the night before as I was worried about it being mishandled by someone. .I got ready by 7.10 and reached office, were all my friends were to assemble. We started at 7:50 a.m. and reached the parking space at about 10 mins past 8. I was on Baalu’s bike. We parked the vehicle and entered the West Stand. The line was small and so it took us 5 mins to enter the VCA stadium through Gate No . 9. As we entered the stadium we could see a big crowd of about 10,000 people already in the stadium. I could see the Indian and WI players practicing in nets. The idea of getting adjacent seats was not that wonderful as nobody was allotted any chair and it was all stairs that were offered to us to sit. That’s not what I was expecting after paying 500 bucks. Anyways, there were posters of Nescafe with 4/6 written all over them. We decided to use them as seat and laid on them.

I lended Binoculars from Sunil Sir, my senior in . With those Binoculars,I could see Ganguly in his 91 no t-shirt and Dhoni in his long Bermudas. They were practicing before the match. I was excited to see them as this was my first time around. I had brought my Sony Ericsson w710i mobile phone with earphones, that would add to the whole excitement.

After about half an hr, came out umpires for the toss. West Indies won the toss and decided to field first. On a batting pitch this is usually not what was expected. India started their innings with Gambhir and Ganguly as openers. The match started and suddenly there was a slurry of 4’s all over the ground. On the batting pitch, both openers took good advantage of early field restrictions and smashed the boundary many a times. The beating did not stop in the rest of the innings and in almost every over there was a certain four. India ended up their innings for an awesome 338 for the loss of 3 wickets. The stadium roared all through the innings whenever there was a boundary of a ball. The stadium waves were seen and people were in full masti mood.

This was definitely a huge milestone to achieve. Windies batted well, especially Chanderpaul , who was later adjudged man of the match, but it was India’s day . Windies ended short of India’s score but lost by a mere 14 runs.

After the end of the match we packed up and moved towards the parking lot. It was our day as India had won.