The Royal Recharge

After a tough schedule, I found some free time to watch a match at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium. The match was expected to be exciting because both the teams, Bangalore and Hyderabad were at the bottom of the table, nearly equal. The rush for tickets was as usual messy and somehow, we laid our hands on a handful.

It was after a long time I was visiting the stadium and the change of scene was quite astonishing. Last time I went there, the entry was free and there were no chairs anywhere on the stands. It was like a stadium in a village. This time though, all the stands, the people, the cameras, etc. made the whole thing a lot more exciting.

We were a bit late for the match due to this tickets issue, and missed the banging of Gilly and Gibbsy. They hit a few more shots and soon started falling. Within a few overs, the whole team crumbled. The score was a mere 165. We expected 190-200 judging by the way they were batting in the beginning.

The Royal Challengers came in soon and started off very slow. Due to force from friends, we shifted our place to the bottom of the stands and where some Bangalore Cheerleaders were entertaining the crowd. It was fun with all the music and dance and whistling but as the match proceeded, I could see that Deccan Chargers were on the brink of losing another match. The result seemed very obvious near the very end and they made it even more so when they smashed so many sixers into the stands where we were watching from. The last runs coming off a six was like a game finished in style and the cheerleaders went crazy by then, cheering up the crowd inspite of the loss...

As a whole, if you ignore the fact that your home team lost the game (for the 6th time!!), we had loads of fun with our voices nearly going sore due to the screaming and shouting. The audience were quite enthusiastic though the team is at the bottom, and confirmed their place there. It was worth the bucks we threw at them, especially after watching players like Vaas, Gibbs and R.P Singh coming over to the boundary and waving to the crowd... Now, after all the excitement is over, I feel sad for Gilchrist again as his team couldn't control one more game from slipping off the hands... The unstoppables (at winning) turned into The Unstoppables (at losing). Sad but true ...