Yesterday’s
9.55am flight (Indigo) from Kolkata to Bangalore had a pleasant surprise for
its passengers’ in store. That’s because we had the IPL team of Royal Challengers Bangalore as our co-passengers.
Starting from international star
players like Yuvraj Singh and Muttiah Muralitharan to Parthiv Patel, Ashok Dinda, Mitchell
Starc and Varun Aaron, I spotted quite a few of them.
Most of the
passengers went crazy, clicking selfies and pictures of their wives and kids (who
were made to stand beside the celebrity passengers). Some even abandoned the
basic etiquette of requesting and taking permission from the cricketers before
clicking with gay abandon.
I, for one, got autographs of 5 players (it surely
did help to have Varun Aaron seated next to me, whom I asked and who agreed to
get autographs of his and some of his teammates seated in the next two rows,
for me). The images were clicked by another of my co-passengers on my request
(I felt too shy to click myself, thinking I may irritate the players, most of
whom looked tired and wanted just to have a good sleep on board the 2.5hrs
flight).
Though I
don’t follow the IPL, it was indeed an experience watching these guys from such
close quarters, listening to their cricketing talks and being privy to some fun
moments (one player disturbing the other’s sleep trying to tickle the nostrils
with a piece of paper, a humorous discussion of the difference between a tiger
and liger, etc).
Despite the
frenzy surrounding them and complete loss of privacy, these cricketers smiled
and allowed almost everyone to click pictures/selfies and get autographs. I had
been to Eden Gardens for a few times in the past but never did I have the
chance to witness such a close company of those, whom we called our “Cricketing
Gods”.
Phew! What an
amazing experience I had!
