As the 90 000 crowd surged to their feet with a mighty roar, I found myself wondering if I’d somehow slipped from one dimension to another. While it might have felt like it, we weren’t at a rock concert. We were at a cricket match – but a cricket match unlike any I’d seen before.
Neither my husband nor I are avid sport watchers, but friends and family told us that we shouldn’t miss the opportunity of going to an IPL cricket match while we were in India. They told us it’d be unlike anything we’d experienced before. And they were right!
So that’s why we found ourselves sitting high up in the stadium amongst 89998 cheering cricket fans supporting the home team, Kolkata Knight Riders in a match against the team from New Delhi. Okay, maybe not 89998 KKR supporters exactly. I’m sure I heard a few people yelling for the visiting team as well – but only a scattered few.
The match got off to an electric start, with the opening batter from the KKR team going out on the very first ball. And that was when the crowd went absolutely wild with excitement.
Somehow it seemed that cricket had changed totally from when I last watched a game. Gone were the prim and proper fan responses, when people would clap politely and say something inane like Öh, jolly good shot!” when a batsman struck a 4. Instead, we had the entire crowd leaping to their feet with cries of jubilation, waving KKR flags wildly and with sexy cheerleaders executing complicated dance routines to thumping music. And that was just when a batsman hit a 4. Can you imagine the response when they hit a 6!
I’ll admit I was a little lost during the game. I don’t know why I’d expected there to be a commentary of what was happening on the pitch, but no such luck. So I had to make do with the odd sound of a cricket ball hitting a cricket bat, and then trying to figure out what had just happened by listening to the crowd’s response. Craig would fill in details for me when he could, but it was at best a less than ideal way to experience a cricket match.
Still, listening to the crowd’s response was entertainment in itself. So I left the stadium in high spirits.
And I swear I’ll never think of cricket in quite the same way. Like we were told by friends and family before our trip – it was most certainly an unforgettable experience.
