A Non-cricket Lover's Review of the CL T20 Final!

This skinny boy was the hero of the crowd on our side of the stadium!  He was continuously waving our Indian flag which was quite big and honking the conch in-between, throughout the nearly 3 hour match! Everybody missed Sachin 'in action', here!

(This boy is in wikipedia, read here .  Aragorn gave this interesting information on 17.10.11)

I used to like watching cricket when so many matches were not played...World Cup matches once in four years (!), then our team visiting other countries and others visiting us to play matches...it was interesting because the gap was more between matches and the match was between different countries playing against each other! Everybody's patriotism went to the hilt and the game was more emotional.  Then one-dayers came...OK, even they were interesting! Now, these commercial matches don't fancy me!  One more thing is, my husband and son seem to be glued to these 'tok tok' matches, whenever they are home! I am made to sit alone in front of another TV (they got me one to shut me up from complaining!) and watch my reality musical shows...before these 'too much' cricket matches, all of us, well, my husband and I, were watching these shows together chatting and discussing and praising the new talents.

I still remember the 1983 Kapil match! We were living in a colony in a small town, Hosur and nearly 20-30 friends of my husband were sitting together and watching the match! I was running a tea-shop for all! Whenever there was a '4' or '6', the whole crowd used to clap and shout and our Andy, the Pomeranian dog, used to stand up on two of his hind legs and jump, twirling around in the same position and keep on barking at people! It was fun! 

We had watched a Ranji Trophy match in Bangalore when the kids were small.  The players were in whites and were just distant objects moving, running here and there...we could see only that much! Then TV came and the addiction to the game grew!

The day before yesterday (9th Oct.'11), my husband and son suddenly decided to watch the CLT 20 match, between Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers (Finals) and insisted on taking me also to the match! First, I thought it might be boring because I don't follow these matches and am not familiar with the current players too! Still, I went and enjoyed watching, not the match, but the atmosphere at the stadium and the 'SPIDER CAM' (click this wikipedia link to see how it works!).  It was fascinating to watch the camera hanging from four rope-like cables and capturing the game from all angles!   Mumbai Indians won the game and the Cup!  Now, to the pictures which interested me most, than the match!

We were not allowed to take even a water bottle inside! We had to 'buy' everything here! One Rs.10 Bingo/Lays pack costed Rs.30, here! But, they should also make money!

Rs.40/- per pack popcorn never fell down from the cones even when they were hanging out from the tray, how?!

These birds were flying in the sky, from one side to the other side of the stadium area, often, maybe, because of the bright lights! I watched them until nearly 10 pm!

Now, to my favourite, Spider Cam! From our seat, on a higher level,  the camera looked as if it was sitting down on the ground here and waiting for the play to start! It resembles our lantern, a bit!

If you click on the picture, you can see Ravi Shastri (in a suit), busy with the toss and the Spider Cam, waiting on the left side of the picture!

The Camera is hanging closer to the Mumbai Indians, here!  Peeping Tom?!

I could recognise our Bajji, Ravi Shastri, Malinga (his designer hair makes him stand out in any crowd!) and Vettori!  I know the game(!), so, was able to watch the match as a distraction from other more interesting happenings! I noticed small children with parents, also enjoying the game!  The crowd loved Malinga and was always clapping and shouting his name whenever he started bowling! The boy who sat behind me, must be speaking in sign language now as he was screaming his lungs out! Bajji was addressed as 'Thalaivaa', meaning 'leader', whenever he was in action! Yes, I will remember this match always, I think!

This is the entrance to the M.A. Chidambaram Cricket Stadium! We were allowed to take our cell phone inside but had to throw away the battery of our camera and take just the camera inside!  When we came came out after the game, we found the battery, where we had thrown it, fixed the camera and clicked this picture!

I took this picture before entering the stadium.  I asked this boy, who was selling this flag, 'Yevloda vele?' (What is the price?)..his reply, 'Nooru rooba' (100 rupees)! Smart fellow, na?

Cricket lovers are going to hate this review!

Edited to add (12.10.11): I am trying the new Blogger Interface for this post! It was difficult for me to adjust the spaces between the captions and the photos and so it was looking horrible, which I found after publishing, yesterday! So, I had to hit the 'unpublish' button, correct all the mistakes and publish again now!