A water cannon salute at the airport; the team bus struggling to make its way through a sea of a crowd at the Marine Drive; a few lakh people queuing outside the Wankhede Stadium to catch a glimpse of their favourite cricketers.
In a nutshell, that’s how Thursday evening looked like in Mumbai as the city welcomed the T20 World Cup-winning Indian team.
Spells of heavy rain, unusually humid conditions, toilets locked at the stadium for a long time, no facility for drinking water and threats of stands exceeding capacity could not deter the crowd as they waited for hours to bask in the glory.
And as one of the spectators, who travelled all the way from Valsad in Gujarat, pointed out, “This was a celebration of the Indian team breaking the title jinx after 11 long years…”
Evoking memories of 2007 when the financial capital of the country came to a standstill following India’s historic win in the inaugural edition of the World T20, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) arranged an open bus parade for the players - from the National Centre of Performing Arts to the iconic Wankhede Stadium - a distance of barely a couple of kilometres - before organising a small felicitation ceremony.
But as the fans waved the tricolour and chanted slogans, the team bus got stuck at Veer Nariman Point en route from the airport, leading to further delay.
With the Churchgate station packed, the gates of the Wankhede Stadium shut to prevent overcrowding, and all major roads clogged, the Mumbai Police had to urge the public to ‘avoid commuting towards Marine Drive’.
But even then, the excited fans - irrespective of age - waited with bated breath outside the Trident Hotel and the stadium just hoping to get lucky.
“This is a special moment for the entire nation,” said Rohan Nagwekar, a student, who waited outside the Trident for more than five hours along with his friends. “When we came in, there weren’t too many people here, but slowly, it got packed. But we did not want to miss out on any moment. So, even though we were hungry, we decided to order food at our location through online apps,” Rohan said with a smile as his younger sister Roohi nodded.
To their surprise, the online app delivered the order within 20 minutes at their preferred location. “I got a call from the customer, who requested me to deliver the food near the barricade opposite the Trident Hotel. With such a huge crowd, it was a difficult task to trace them, but I eventually did give them food,” the rider of the food aggregator told this publication, adding with a smile: “ Bachhe kab se khade hain, bhooka thodi na rakh sakte hain…”
Close to the Trident, outside the iconic Air India building, stood Pradeep Gaur, a resident of Kandivli, donning a saffron-coloured jersey. A die-hard fan of Virat Kohli, Gaur - who is in his mid-thirties - named his 10-month-old son after that of Kohli’s son Aakay. “Since I could not bring him here, I wore a jersey that had Akaay’s name written on it. It’s my way of showing my respect and love to Virat,” Gaur said with a smile before rushing to click selfies with other fans.
And these were just snippets of Mumbai’s much-talked-about spirit. Some enterprising youngsters climbed on a tree opposite the team hotel, some stood for hours on the terrace of the high-rise buildings surrounding the Wankhede Stadium and those who weren’t that lucky, it was just waiting for hours and being part of a ‘ I was there’ moment!
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