Indian in the US watching the WC - ESPN Article

[Goughy]

As explained in the thread title the following is an article from ESPN Page 2 about watching the Ind-Bang game at a Bollywood cinema in Southern California.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=shah/070319

Religiously, Indians consist of Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists and Zoroastrians, however for us Indian cricket fans, we ardently followed the trimurti of Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar. Two members of that holy trinity were batting now.

If someone else has posted this already could a mod close this. Thanks

 

[Trigger_Tiger]

Tigers’ Fan Follwing!

Hmm, nice article that. Here is one of mine. I am not writing about the match much since I'm pretty sure we all watched it. I am just writing about my personal experiance as a fan, my joy and the tremendous fun I had that day.

Tigers’ Fan Follwing​

March 16:

I live in the city of Elizabeth, in the state of New Jersey in USA. On the day before the first Bangladesh match, it was snowing really very hard. Actually it was a mixture of sleet and snow. My university was closed down due to the tremendous bad weather and by the time I set my mind to definitely not miss this game the next day, it was already 4:00 Pm and there was over 6 inches of snow/sleet mix outside. The traffic outside was horrendously slow. I was determined to walk to the train station even in such a bad weather. On a regular day a walk to the station would be 15 minutes for me. But it was to be almost twice the time that day for there was gusty wind blowing and the sleet made the white covering on the sidewalk hard instead of soft to walk on.

Yet I walked to the station. Thinking how I must have missed the train by a few minutes, I was proven wrong when there was an announcement saying how the train would be 20 minutes late to arrive due to the inclement weather. Great! Here I was standing on this platform 30 feet above the street with such strong winds that seemed to nearly be threatening to push me off the side railings, and add to that the tiny sleet hitting my face like Brett Lee yorkers coming at what felt like a 100 mph!

I wait, and wait, and wait! Finally the train arrives. I get on the train and it reaches the New York Penn Station late! Very late!

There were so many people in there due to the delay that I nearly had to crowd surf like in a rock concert and get myself out into the subway station. So there I was waiting for the E train to take me to Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, NY.

I boarded the train and accidentally missed my stop when I dozed off (hadn't slept the previous night, too excited to watch my country play the game). So what did I do? I stopped at the next station and cussed myself, tried calling my friend to ask him to pick me up, but whoa! I forgot, my cellular phone does not have any network in subways!

I waited for the next V train, got on board and arrived at my destination a few hours later than I was to be there!

In my daze I tried to find a place to crash for the night at and my friend’s uncle let me stay over at his place. So there I was walking a few more blocks to get to his house.

I got there and neither I nor my friend could sleep. The excitement was too much to handle! Call us over-confident, but we knew what would follow the next day - a victory to our Tigers!

March 17:

Just at about 7:30 Am, it was getting pretty hard to keep our eyelids open, but we prepared ourselves and walked down two blocks to Eagle Theater where they would telecast the match LIVE.

1st Innings:

At first our natural thoughts were "Dude, should we scream our lungs out when our kids hit a 6 or a 4 or when an Indian wicket falls? I mean, I bet there'd be so many Indians here today; they have always got tons of fans everywhere! Would we be slain or something *laughs*"

The hall started filling in. We were the first in there though - 8:30 Am - 45 minutes before the match was to start.

Slowly we could hear the murmuring of people, and wow, they spoke Bangla! Could they be from Kolkata? No, wait, their accent was more like ours.

The first innings started. Mashrafe Mortaza followed our hopes up with a few extras and everyone frowned. And then a wicket! Another one followed!

The hall started to fill in. Slowly but surely as the runs went dry and wickets tumbled at regular intervals, every time the Indian batsmen were troubled, the roaring for the Bangladesh supporting crowd seemed to increase.

Heck! We were wrong! The fans here were mostly Bangladeshi fans! We waited and counted the number of people who cheered for India just out of curiosity - 12 Indian fans in the first Innings to that of 125 Bangladesh fans.

Occasionally we dozed of when Saurav Ganguly and Yuvraj Singh started to reconstruct the innings, but every single time we had shut-eye, it wasn't even 30 seconds or so before everyone would clap and cheer the Tigers' fielding effort or their immaculate line-and-length, their precision bowling.

At the end of the Indian innings when their 5 wickets tumbled for only 2 runs, the crowd went absolutely nuts! Everyone became each other's brother, cheering, giving hi-5s, hugs flying around and the crazy tiger dances!

What a match, what a moment it was!

Lunch Break:

We hiked back home.

2nd Innings:

We missed the first 2 over where Tamim Iqbal made Ice Kachang of Zaheer Khan and Munaf Patel's bowling, and entered right when Shahriar Nafees was adjudged LBW.
What dismay! Then again, Tamim kept his slogging on and the crowd went crazy! This time it was something like 25 Indian fans to over 175-200 Bangladeshi fans! It was a full-house!

Every single misfielding by the Indians, every single smack down the ground for sixes and fours, every singles, twos and threes and were cheered on. Mushfiqur Rahim's solid defense and Sakib-al-Hasan's hits for 4s, the crowd never stopped from the word get-go to cheer for Bangladesh.

I'm neither trying to be boastful about my team's fielding efforts, nor am I trying to criticize any Indian fans but during the end of the innings, the Men-In-Blue fans in the hall would cheer for every single Indian fielding attempt even if the fielder goofed up bad!

And when Bangladesh won the match - It was sight to be seen!
The cheers were doused for a little while during post match interviews, where in comparison to Dravid's pretty dull replies, Bashar’s was cheered on immensely and the roaring of the Tiger fans resumed!

Being there that day was like being at a stand in Port-of-Spain in Trinidad! There was barely any difference! Had the Mexican-Wave been performed by the crowd at Port-of-Spain, I'm sure it would be have been emulated in the theater as well!

I had no freaking idea before that day that my countrymen were as crazy as my country's neighbor when it came to their cricket team. Mind you, in the end we celebrated the victory but were respectful to the Indian fans after the match!

A gloomy day followed by bright sunshine and people out on the street all cheering for Bangladesh, and partying till the sun went down was a truly sweet moment to remember.

It was one heck of a day. Not just because Bangladesh won, but because I got to know the gargantuan fan following Bangladesh has in Northern America and in the Caribbean if not all over the world!

 

[Turbinator]

Hmmm, nice stuff Trigger_Tiger . Quite interesting tbh.

 

[Trigger_Tiger]

.....

Hmmm, nice stuff Trigger_Tiger . Quite interesting tbh.

Thx !!!!!

 

[LA ICE-E]

you think there will be any mention of the world cup on tv though? i doubt it but what about canada is there mentions of it in normal tv like news etc?

 

[Turbinator]

you think there will be any mention of the world cup on tv though? i doubt it but what about canada is there mentions of it in normal tv like news etc?

There is OMNI news which is a multicultural channel, where they have shown a bit on the WC. Oh and there is the Toronto Star, which gives news everyday on each match and other stuff, in the sports section.

 

[Trigger_Tiger]

....

you think there will be any mention of the world cup on tv though? i doubt it but what about canada is there mentions of it in normal tv like news etc?

Depends on your cable/dish oprator. Depends on the channels they provide !!!!!

 

[LA ICE-E]

but to the general canadians who doesn't have any clue about cricket, do they have access to it through normal tv not "expat tv"? because thats whats needed for it to be known around normal canadians