It was a lightening atmosphere inside the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium as sound of around 35,000 roaring crowd scratched sky when pacer Bhuvnewshar Kumar of Pune Warrior started the run-up to bowl Mahela Jayawardene the skipper of Delhi Daredevil during the debut match of IPl-T20 for Chhattisgarh on a fine Sunday evening.
The spectator enjoyed every shot, boundary and fall of wickets. This was for the first time that Raipurinas were seeing their favourite cricket stars playing on field.
The spectators clad in tees of their favourite team and waving their flags went wild after Jayawardene gave an inside edge to the ball towards fine leg thereby directing it out of the boundary. Supporters of Delhi Daredevil were disappointed when Ashok Dindane took the wicket of Jayawardene who was caught on short cover in the second over of the match.
The popular numbers of bollywood and presence of cheer leaders made the milieu more eclectic. With every towering sixes and boundaries the jubilant crowd left their seats shouting aloud coupled with music thereby making the environment nerve exiting.
The environment outside the stadium was equally energetic. large number of spectators including all walks of life and age group started to arrive at the ground several hours before the scheduled time for the match.
It was a good business time of face painting artists, flag vendors, mask sellers and others. Murli Sahu a resident coming long way from Kolkata charged Rs 50 for every face. Sahu while painting faces of some youngsters and talking with, The Pioneer he said, “it is good business time for me. I hope that I would be able to make some handsome amount today,” said a hopeful Sahu.
Utkarsh 15, accompanied with his parents backed Delhi Daredevil with Sehwag as his favourite star while Soumil his younger brother 7 backed Pune Warrior and said delightfully said that Yuvraj Singh must win.