The Mighty IPL

We narrowly missed the 2013 season of cricket's Indian Premier League when we moved to Mumbai in June last year.  This was a great disappointment to Philip, particularly given that our local team, the Mumbai Indians, picked up the trophy.

For the uninitiated, the IPL is test cricket's younger, glamorous brother in which eight teams, each attached to a city or region in India, compete to be the champions of 20:20 cricket (each team bowls 20 overs, or 120 balls).  The teams are decided by auction each year, and include foreign players in addition to the cricket stars of India.  The eight teams play each other twice, so each play 14 games in total, in a league, then the top four teams fight it out for a place in the final, which will take place in Bangalore this weekend.

India is utterly mad about cricket.  The IPL captures this excitement in 3-hour evening matches in packed stadiums complete with cheerleaders, very loud music, and an excitingly large number of 4s, 6s and other trick shots.  To compound the feverish excitement, the IPL takes place at the height of summer in sweltering conditions. It isn't test cricket, but it's very entertaining.

The first half of this year's tournament took place in the UAE as the security required to host the matches in India was occupied with the General Election.  Unfortunately, the Mumbai Indians didn't seem to take well to this and were at the bottom of the league upon returning to India, having lost most of their early games.

Happily, once in India, their performance picked up and, by the time we went to see their penultimate match at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday, they were in with a (very) outside chance of getting through to the playoffs and staying in the competition.

We saw the Mumbai Indians play the Delhi Daredevils, the team at the bottom of the league.  Mumbai batted first and had a strong start, helped by some amazing slogs into the crowd from the opening batsmen.  Delhi fought back but it wasn't enough, so we saw a win for the home crowd.  The cricket was fun, but it's the atmosphere that makes the IPL.  The crowd are crazily enthusiastic with cheering and flag-waving, and the (very) loud music creates a fantastic mood in the stadium.  The loudest cheers came any time that the king of Indian cricket, Sachin Tendulkar, flashed onto the big screen, closely followed by any activity from Pollard, the big hitting star of the Mumbai Indians.  The scantily clad cheerleaders (all white by the way...) are a bit random, but add to the fun, and the overall set-up reminded me of baseball, with lots of food and drink (no alcohol) purveyors wandering up and down the rows.  Every other person seems to have a horn or vuvuzela, which is deafening, but all in the spirit of a good night out supporting the local team.

Wankhede Stadium - Entering from Gate 4 

Every seat has a flag!  The stadium was really well decorated with Mumbai Indians garb 

Our view 

There were several cheerleader stands around the edge of the pitch 

Once the floodlights had come on - the atmosphere was even better in the dark than in the light 

A mid-match samosa snack.  Two for 60 rupees 

 A vuvuzela in action

Looking very warm 

A frequently seen shirt in the stadium

The security to enter the stadium was high in the sense that you had to be frisked four or so times before reaching the gates, and no liquids (or much else) were allowed inside.  Saying that, I had some suncream with me which avoided confiscation through me persuading the security staff that I had a medical condition (being very fair), which was sort-of true.  They let me through with it in the end.

Going to see a live IPL game was brilliant, but not as exciting as the game we watched at home last night.  To qualify, the Mumbai Indians needed not only to beat the Rajasthan Royals, but to score 190 runs in 14.3 overs to beat the overall run-rate of the RRs, a very challenging target.  It felt impossible, but the Mumbai Indians played incredibly well, and as they approach the 14th over, it actually looked possible.

With one ball left, the Mumbai Indians had scored 188 runs, and only managed to score one off the last ball.  We all thought that was it for the Mumbai Indians; edged out of the tournament by one run, after 14 games.  Thankfully, some clever bod realised that a four or a six off the next ball would win the game for the MI, and increase the average run rate enough to qualify.  A new batsman came out and smashed his first ball over the horizon. Amazingly, the Mumbai Indian are though. 

There was one fantastic batsmen, Anderson, who lead the charge for the IPL.  The heat was evident by his need to take off this helmet at regular intervals to empty out the sweat that had accumulated!

We haven't had quite enough of the IPL yet, and will be going to another live match on Friday (the final qualifier for a place in the final) and there is now a possibility that the Mumbai Indians will be there.  Based on the last two matches, I very much hope so.