When it’s India-Pakistan, it is a lot of fan chirp, camaraderie, smart one-liners and banter of striking humour. “Agar Adelaide Oval mein aaogey to ‘India, India’ chillana; ‘pak pak’ to har murgi karti hai,” a garrulous Indian fan who insisted his name was Smiley announced to general laughter just when Virat Kohli took guard to face net bowlers.
The Pak repartee was no less. “Jiski murgi uska match,” Sabir Khan retorted to more laughter. The congenial one-upmanship between the colours blue and green was the order of a sizzling Saturday with a 41 degrees temperature being ignored by the fans.
If the Indian fans at Adelaide were spearheaded by the most known cricket fan face on TV Sudhir Chaudhary, the Pakistanis were led by Mohammed Bashir all the way from Chicago. Now that the famous Pakistani chacha is too old to travel, Bashir has seriously taken the mantle from him both in looks and in verve.
As Sudhir and Bashir held their respective national flags high and chanted for victory on Sunday, the beautiful Adelaide Oval reverberated with the practice session of the national anthems that will be sung before the match at 2 pm local time.
Wearing a shirt saying Jis des mein Ganga behti hai, us des se meri biwi hai (his wife is from Hyderabad in India). He repeatedly chanted “Jeetega bhai, jeetega, Pakistan jeetega!”. As Sudhir waved the Tricolour furiously, Basheer declared: “Is baar Diwali hum manayenge!”
Sudhir, meanwhile, is here thanks to the intervention of Sachin Tendulkar who had to put in a word for him to get an Australian visa. His trip, however, has been sponsored by a radio station, and not the BCCI this time. Talking about how he misses Tendulkar in the middle, he said in Hindi: “I know it is going to be very hot tomorrow but the Tricolour will not be put down even for a second and Sachin will be my inspiration.”
With almost 20000 Indians having trooped into this “30-Minute City” for the high voltage India-Pakistan match, and Pakistani fans coming in a sea of green, Adelaide is seeing a rare cricket rush. Hotels, inns and hostel accommodation are all sold out and as a local said “Indians are coming out of everywhere.” A local said the India-Pak fan ratio will be 70-20 with the local Australians populating 10 per cent of the stands.
With everything sold out, even the match tickets in black, fans, like Ahmed from Melbourne, have decided to attend the match and then spend the night at the airport to take the flight back home early Monday morning. “The Adelaide airport officials have said we might get some mattresses to sleep over at the airport after the match. If Pakistan win, I wouldn’t mind that at all,” he said.