IPL and the Mumbai Indians

Last week I was in Bombay and I thought that I would kill two birds with one stone by going for an IPL match live. As luck would have it, there was a match scheduled for the Sunday that I was in town, between the Mumbai Indians (MI) and the Deccan Chargers. Now before I get too far ahead, let me clarify that I am a fan of the IPL, but not fanatical about it. I watch the matches, when I can and will not lose sleep if I miss them. Nor do I ardently root for any one team, though MI by dint of being from my hometown beats the others by a nose.

Well anyway I thought I would take my Dad and my Father-in-Law to the game as well - a sort of boys’ night out! I bought the tickets online and the site was impressive. It was professional, intuitive, allowed you to choose your seats and in fact also showed you the view of the ground from the seats selected. The icing on the cake was that the tickets could, and were delivered home for me.

On the evening of the match we left well in time, as these matches tend to go full, and logistics management is definitely not a strong Indian trait. We took a taxi, as parking would be impossible, and reached the stadium almost an hour before the start. As expected there were long snaking lines to get in, but to my surprise, the cops and the ushers, on seeing my father as a very senior citizen, shorted us right to the front. We were even allowed to take the elevator up to our stand, and we were on our seats a good 45 minutes before the game. So far so good!

This is when the fun started.

COMFORT

It took us exactly 5 seconds to figure out that the plastic bucket seats were a couple of sizes too small for Mahatma Gandhi, leave alone us. Even a century of fasting would not fit a sadhu's backside comfortably. As the seats next to mine (I was on the inside) started to fill, the only way to avoid physical contact was to hunch my back and roll in my shoulders. Not only was the seat narrow in width, but the builders had obviously intended for two dimensional flat figures to walk between the rows. Every time someone wanted to get into or out of the aisle, I had to lift my legs up to my shoulders and crunch up into a ball, or turn to the side and put my legs on to the lap of the person sitting next to me. All very good in a land where males think nothing of walking around holding hands and their pinkies intertwined, but would be catastrophic anywhere else! Obviously the designers were thinking about the emancipated Indian villager, when they installed the seats.

Since it was impossible for average sized individuals to sit shoulder to shoulder, we spent the next 3 hours with individuals in every alternating seat, either leaning forward or sitting back. And it was just amazing how complete strangers soon got into this rhythm.

NOISE

As the stadium started to fill up, the noise level grew exponentially. Initially that gave me a buzz, but within 15 minutes, a low grade migraine started to form in my head. The noise was incessant and loud, alternating between Bollywood music, the DJ shouting something incomprehensible, and the crowd cheering and clapping at nothing or everything. There would be a sudden roar from the crowd and I would look around in anticipation to see that people were cheering a pigeon landing on the field! Every time the crowd tired and started to become quiet, the DJ would play the IPL signature tune, to rouse the crowd into frenzy. Every time that played (which was every 10 minutes, or whenever the noise reduced by a few decibels, whichever was sooner) the mob would start clapping, hooting, trumpeting or shouting, and I would have no idea why. I have been to sports events in other parts of the world, but this was clamor at a totally different level. I have been to nightclubs which have been more sedate! Obviously we Indians do not believe we are enjoying unless our eardrums are being assaulted. I kept glancing at my father enviously, who by dint of the fact that he is hard of hearing could eject his hearing aids anytime he chose.

SEAT ALLOTTMENT

Even though the seats had been pre-allotted at the time of booking, a lot of the people obviously changed their minds on entering the stands, and decided to sit where they thought they had a better view. Hence by the time the match was about to start, there was absolute pandemonium, as the ushers tried desperately to get people in to their allotted seats, only to find them already occupied. Initially they did try and work out the seating arrangements, but they might as well have been herding cats! The ushers were ultimately reduced to helpless wrecks, as they were caught between annoyed late-comers looking for their allotted seats, and the seated customers who were growing increasingly irate as their view of the match was being impeded.

FOOD

All through the match there was a continuous procession of food and drink vendors, who thought nothing of stepping on our toes in their frantic efforts to reach the more inaccessible customers. The chap sitting next to me had obviously come there to eat, as he showed scant interest in the match and his eye was always on the lookout for these vendors. I think I saw more of his armpit as he leant across me (to grab food being passed to him and money that he passed back to the vendor), than I saw of the match. I think he sampled almost everything that was available on the menu, and there was a lot!

ACCESS

When we got to our seats at the start, I was aghast at the access and exit corridors which not only were extremely narrow, but each step was of varying height. Going up was like traversing a minefield, and one had to continuously look down to make sure that one did not over or under step, to the same bad result. To me this was a huge safety issue. But that is one area where I felt the designers had been one step ahead of me. They had been obviously aware of the inherent safety in numbers, and I noticed that as the match went on, the heaving crowd along these passages provided a safe landing for anyone (actually most people) who tripped, and in quite a few cases it was actually a soft landing on to rather well built individuals.

CONCLUSION

Well having done this once, I seriously doubt whether I will embark on a similar adventure again. I will stick to watching this on TV, where the noise levels are muted, and the weather is controlled, and the match can be watched in HD.

In retrospect I have to laud the patience of the public who put up with that environment, because anywhere else in the world the same would have sparked riots. Many were the times when I wanted to just explode at the nuisance or disturbance around me, but I controlled my emotions. I did not see a single fight or argument erupt, as most people just laughed, compromised, accommodated and endured with a shrug on their shoulders, a smile on their lips and a samosa in their mouth.

By the way the Mumbai Indians won the match, but we were not there to see it. As soon as the result became evident, there was an exodus. Having been exposed to mass behavior for so many hours we just followed like lemmings, and read the result of the match in next day’s papers.