The IPL final
As the saints have said, virtue triumphs in the end. Take the IPL for instance – I had bought tickets for both semi finals to distribute to people, and I thought that it would be a good idea to go myself - see IPL match on sarkari kharcha. But virtue triumphed, and I didn’t go, and virtuously handed over all tickets to the people I had bought it for.
And then, out of the blue, old friend Ajit calls up and says he’s got tickets for the finals, and would I like to come along!
I thought it was a free ticket, and I was revelling in the rare feeling of virtue triumphing. But, when I met him, it turned out to be a paid ticket, and I had to fork out two grand. So, it was not that complete a triumph, but still OK. Another mutual friend, Venky had also come, and the three of us went over to D Y Patil, and smartly parked far away from the stadium so that we wouldn’t get stuck in parking issues. The downside of this shrewd planning was ofcourse that we had walk for a kilometre to get into the stadium.
We passed platoons and platoons of cops along the way – unorganised gangs of cops, just milling around without much sense of organisation. Thankfully they didn’t throw their weight around, but skulked in corners. I had bad memories of live matches after a terrible sardine-can / sauna bath / chicken coop experience of watching an India SL ODI at Wankhede some years back, and so I was looking forward to this with some trepidation. But I was pleasantly surprised today – it was a breeze to get into this stadium, and the seats were also very nice, with a great view of the ground. And in a wonderful contrast to the concentration-camp atmosphere of normal matches, there was food and drink being sold – impressive variety of food , from pizza to samosa, and the prices were actually more reasonable that the multiplexes. Good fun.
D Y Patil is a nice stadium too, with openings in the stands to let the breeze in, and though it was hot and sultry, it was never unbearable. The stands were chockablock full of cheering fans with a 95% support for Mumbai Indians, all shouting away to glory. The merchandise stalls were doing great business, and one item on sale was blue coloured horns with small lights inside them, mounted on a plastic hair band. As the sun set and it grew dark, the stands were twinkling with blue lights – it looked absolutely magical. The giant floodlights were not on, so you get the full advantage of the spectacular sunset, and the twinkling blue horns of the audience. Wonderful!
Meanwhile, we were watching the players practising on the ground (like school children cramming at the last minute outside the exam hall) and identifying the stars – Sachin, Murli, Malinga, Pollard, etc were easy to identify, and having been doing nothing but watching the IPL for the last 40 days, I was able to identify almost every player on the ground.
‘Why aren’t the lights coming on?’ I wondered.
‘For the closing ceremony of course’ Ajit replied, pointing to the stage set up in the ground.
And he was right. Talk about a tale told by an idiot – full of sound and fury – signifying nothing. What a terrible cock up it was! Full of expensive stars – Rehman, Bipasha, Shahid Kapoor (OK, maybe he was not all that expensive) , and a bunch of congenital idiots milling about on the ground- Band walas, dancers, kids in silly costumes, clowns on stilts, hovercrafts and a wide assortment of morons scratching their butts to music.
Then a gigantically idiotic statue of a batsman who looked like his arms were cruelly deformed and was holding a giant bat like a crutch was wheeled on to the ground, and to my horror a giant ball shaped balloon appeared in the other corner of the ground. And then, in a display of utter stupidity and bad taste, they tied a rope to the ball and moved it to the batsman, the statue of the batsman was moved as if he hit a shot and the ball moved glacially away, and thankfully was taken outside the ground. Ugh!
It actually summed up all the bad things of the IPL – huge money being thrown around, Noise, bright lights , and a complete lack of taste or aesthetics.
After that shit-storm, we got to the business end of the tournament- namely, the cheer-leaders! The girls were announced by the MC, and they came running out to take their positions. We had the Chennai super kings team in front of us – and though they were attired modestly in full pants and t shirts, they were so pretty, the whole stand fell in love! Wah wah! A stray thought came to me about the strangeness of 3 white girls dancing for Chennai – shouldn’t there have been a few madrasi chicks as well? But hey, we gotta the no problemos!
Then the game started – Chennai won, and they came to bat. And it was terribly boring batting, especially by Hayden, who looks as if he has lost it completely. They neither lost wickets and neither did theyscore runs, so the first half was quite quiet! The stadium was completely blue, due to the Mumbai Indians colours, but it was very interesting to see the colour change when they hit a four. The blue would die down, and yellow flags would be seen, like wildflowers on a mountain side. A wicket or a save, and the yellow would be drowned out by Blue.
This persisted until Dhoni and Raina decided to tickle things up with some wild hitting. Man, Dhoni is the man – there was this one-handed six which was really impressive. Raina was wildly swinging, and tried his best to get out, but Mumbai fielders had 2 ‘Duh’ moments and dropped sitters. Raina then decided that this is his day, and he generally went wild and Chennai scored 60+ runs in the last 5 overs. Even at that time we realised that Mumbai had dropped the match with that dropped catch.
When Mumbai came to bat, they were even more boring than Chennai – Dhawan played out the first over as a maiden, the stupid twerp, and then got out. Sachin then had a ‘Duh’ game as captain, sent out everybody except Pollard the guy in form. Nair, Harbhajan, Ambaty, Tiwary – they all came, they saw, and they made a fool of themselves and went back.
We tried our best to pep them up with shouts of ‘Sachin SAAACHEEEN’ and Mexican waves and what not, but no, they were dead. In a case of brain dead captaincy and coaching, the most impressive Pollard came in at No. 8! Far too late to do anything. He showed us the error of the management by flaying the bowling for 22 runs in one over. The massive 4s and 6s got us all excited, but it was a bridge too far, and he duly got out trying to slog too often. There was steadily more and more yellow visible, and finally the blue drooped and vanished and the yellow banners were left in possession of the field.
So like the Indian teams of the 80s and 90s, Mumbai Indians duly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
However, the good thing about IPL is that you are not as emotionally invested into the teams as you are with the national team. So people came out with a wry shrug rather than the black depression which would have happened in an international.
We left immediately after the game, and so missed Lalit Modi’s golden words.
And ah yes, we saw that damn MRF blimp – where is a rocket launcher when you need one?
So to sum up – it was like the story of my marriage – MUMBAI vs CHENNAI – and Chennai wins!
