I Was There

April 25, 2010: IPL Final, Mumbai Indians vs Chennai Super Kings, DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai.

I WAS THERE. I saw CSK become the winners of the Indian Premier League. Ye hai Chennai, Chennai Super King.

The stadium was jam packed. The atmosphere party like. The crowd (including yours truly) rooting firmly for the Mumbai Indians. But it was Dhoni's day as Raina led CSK to victory.

Watching a game in the stadium is a different experience all together. You move with the crowd. You sing along with them. You dance along with them. You share high fives with the unknown people near you. You participate in Mexican Waves. You can whistle all you like without anyone minding. And you dont feel like an idiot while wearing the inflatable zoozoo cap with a team flag draped around your shoulders. And the best part, you dont have to suffer the silly ads, or the sponsored commentary. You can forget about the DLF Maximum or Karbonn Kamaal Catches. You may miss the action in some bits but then you can always catch the replay afterwards on the big screen. Amongst other things I managed to see the marvel of technology that is the MRF Blimp.

And I really loved the Fly camera. Now its a wish to operate it one time at least.

The match itself was good. Outstanding moment of the day. Raina catching Tiwary off Jakati.

I had also been to the 3rd place match. RCB won. The match was boring, Stadium was only half full. But the atmosphere made up for it quite a bit. 

It was a real pleasure though to see some all time greats, some current stars and a few potential big names in the making in action. So now the players whom I saw in action over the 2 matches

CSK: Dhoni, Hayden, Murali, Raina, Bollinger,Vijay, Badrinath, Albie, Ashwin, Jakati, Aniruddha

MI: Sachin, Harbhajan, Zaheer, Malinga, Pollard, Duminy, Ferando, Tiwary, Rayudu, Nayar, Dhawan

RCB: Kumble, Dravid, Kallis, Pietersen, Steyn, Uthappa, White, Kohli, Praveen, Akhil, Doshi

DC: Gilchrist, Symonds, Rohit, Harris, Ojha, Rahul Sharma, Harmeet, Dwayne Smith, Mohnish Mishra, Anirudh Singh.

There were non-cricket performers as well. AR Rehman, Bipasha Basu & Shahid Kapoor.

Overall the experience was simply AWESOME.