Part 2:

The Match, The Rush:

“We enter the stadium and this is what follows:
Sachin….sachin….sachin…the entire Brabourne stadium roared. And I…I was one of them. I was pumped up…speechless…amazed…at how one man could bring the nation...Alive! Together! Like one beating heart..!”
Even a staunch KKR supporter (though a big fan of Sachin as well!) couldn’t help but feel a happy rush as the crowd cheered their favorite son on!

A Sachin and Sourav face-off, anywhere in this whole wide world and me witnessing that face off was a dream I had cherished for a long time and 8 pm on the night of 22nd March at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai- my dream came true!
The joy, the excitement, the whole feeling of seeing a live match courses through me even as I sit and write this- it is a feeling that is hard to put down in words and even harder to control! But it is a feeling that I have been fortunate enough to experience and will cherish for all my life!
Every time a shot was hit by the Little Master, one could feel the power and the exhilaration in every cheer of the crowd and the thrill that coursed through them was infectious- unreal. The whole stadium looked so beautiful and there was this vibrant feeling in the air which always kept egging you on to become someone totally different from who you were. I was no exception, I danced as the cheerleaders danced, I screamed my lungs out at all the wrong times just for the heck of it- I was an excited fool who cared about nothing except each passing moment in the match! I went there as a KKR fan who unabashedly sat with the Mumbai Indian supporters and sang Korbo, Lorbo, Jeetbo re even as the fight was snuffed out by the ferocity of a certain Mr. Sachin Tendulkar. I went there as a KKR fan; having a small feeling of the impending doom which ultimately struck the Knight Riders but returned a happy man, having witnessed something extraordinary. I wanted to see a special from either of the two tigers and though Sourav didn’t shine as much, my wish was granted by Sachin, who was in sublime form and enthralled the crowd with an amazing array of strokes!
The whole feeling to the place was electric! It was highly weird though, sitting in the VIP seats where there was a section of the crowd who just watched the match with the occasional cheer here and there. It gave me a very weird feeling that whatever I shouted be it in Bengali or English or Hindi, I could hear myself saying it! But I couldn’t care less, it is not often that you get the most awesome seats and get the complete freedom to go mad with the reward being having all the stupidness being shown on television, which for me actually happened! I guess what really spurred me on were the amazingly beautiful cheerleaders! Often I was caught by my friend Amit who accompanied me to the match, just ogling at the cheerleaders instead of watching the match!
I wonder how the players keep their eyes off the prize which the IPL has given to mankind!
Thanks to my dad, I actually got the tickets without paying a penny in the best possible place ever- the Pavilion End, to make it simpler for the layman to understand, right next to the player’s box! A seat next to Mr. Shah Rukh Khan would have been something out of a dream book but well this one’s not that far away either!
Fireworks, flags, jerseys, painted faces; everything was on display at Brabourne. It was excellent! It was super, a once in a lifetime experience! Something that I will cherish all my life!
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