A night at the "CRICKET STADIUM" !!!!!!

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! India vs. England world cup match is been shifted from Eden gardens, Kolkata to chinnaswamy cricket stadium, Bangalore. I decided to be a part of that match on the same day when I heard the news.

it was announced in the paper that tickets will be sold in the stadium on 24th Feb...the match was on 27th Feb... chinnaswamy stadium can hold around 43,000 people in it...but with all the issues of shifting the venue, giving tickets to the English ppl, passes etc, only 8000 tickets were sold to the public !!!

So to make our dream come true, Me and my cousin guru rushed in to the stadium on 23rd night at 9.30 itself...we could hardly see 200 odd cricket fans eager to buy the tickets. We had decided to buy 1250 rs ticket thinking that there will less queue for this category, but actually we were WRONG !!! as the time passed by people came in huge numbers and by around 12.00, there were many as close to 5000. some were sitting on the footpath, some were on the trees, some were asleep in the cubbon park and the heat had already turned on. It was like a family of people waiting was some occasion to start. and literarily it was an occasion !!!! watching India play on England live , that too in a event like world cup is not a joke. it’s a dream come true for many of the fans, including me :) 

We walked through the streets, in and around the stadium waiting for the queue to form...but the police guys were reluctant of allowing to do that before 8.00 am ( 24th Feb. ). on a day like this, sorry a night, tat too mid night like this, it was hard to make out ones face with only a few street lights on. but it was tooo easy to recognize a policeman with the helmet on his head and a lathi in his hand. some of the fans were trying to form the queue near the ticket counter and all followed them ..finally finally ,there was a loooong queue in which we fought ourselves to be at it...tat too we were standing in the position where there were around150-200 ppl standing in front of us...we were happy that we will get the tickets for sure. no one allowed anyone, not even their brothers, close frnds to join in between since all had the fear of not getting the ticket if the numbers increased. I dint even realize that my happiness had to be only for 10 mins until the police started waving their lathis at the queue...all ran for their lives ...literarily it was a crowd explosion !!! people ran in all directions...I lost my wildcraft cap in this rush :( ,within a minute, in a queue of around 10k people, not even one was visible near the ticket counter...so then I realized wat was the effect of lathi. Oh My God..those policemen were ruthless for the fans . but the fight for standing in the queue did not stop there.. each and every time people came near the ticket counter, police were chasing them and it happened like a see-saw kind of a thing. 

people accumulating near the stadium did not stop. they kept coming in large numbers and by 3.00 am , there were almost as many people who can fill the whole stadium. camp fires began in the cubbon park..there were many groups and each group lit up a camp fire to get rid of the cold. some were talking about the police, some were making fun about the incident that happened, and almost all were connected to cricket in one or the other way.

Finally when it was 5.00 am, flood of people were rushing towards the ticket counter and this was the time we decided not to go ahead any further and go back instead .we left stadium with a feeling of something lost and reached home..and in the morning news I could see that there was a lathi charge on the people and during this incident , many were injured..so I thought it was a wise decision that we left stadium early. 

     It was a special feeling in whole of waiting for one piece of paper for more than 7 hours, and that sleepless night brought me to see the city totally in a different angle.