India v Pakistan WC 2023 - stadium experience

[Trichromatic]

Tickets

I wanted to attend India games during this world cup. ICC was releasing tickets on bookmyshow in staggered manner and it was difficult to get one for India games. Every time I got a mail about tickets being released, I used try on BookMyShow at 8 PM only to be put in long online waiting queue. 

 

I tried to get India Pakistan tickets during first release, but no luck.

 

Later one of my friend told that he had got tickets on bookmyshow and how he got it. When tickets were released again just a week before the match, he tried again to book one for me and luckily he got it again.

 

Travel

Planning travel 1 week before the match was another issue. Flights to Ahmedabad were expensive, so I just booked a Friday morning flight to Mumbai and decided to travel to Ahmedabad by train from thereon.

 

Later Indian railways announced a special train to Ahmedabad for Friday night. I booked that train and reached Ahmedabad on Saturday morning.

 

The train was full of people going to Ahmedabad specifically for match. A family of 6 was sitting in same coach and they told me that they got tickets for 20k each (original price 2k). There was group of guys who were having intense discussion about who should play and who shouldn't etc. I might have even heard a comment asking to drop both Jadeja and Pandya from team. 

 

Walk to stadium

Since BCCI had planned for some pre-match show inviting singer Arijit Singh and others at 12:30 PM (match at 2 PM), we planned to reach by 11:30.

 

We had to walk a stretch of 1.5 km to reach stadium. There were lot of vendors selling merch and face paint etc.

 

 

 

 

Road was full of match goers and there was point where everyone was crammed in the street. You didn't even need to walk, rather crowd pushed you towards the gate.

 

 

At this point, it felt that India is crowded and it would have been great if there was some sort of order.

 

Finally we reached this grand stadium at around 12:15 PM.

 

 

 

We had carried only phone and wallet as we knew that nothing else was allowed. We could see lot of things like bottle, gunglasses covers thrown on the road as people weren't allowed take those in.

 

There were multiple levels of security checks and once we crossed that, we had representatives of bookmyshow to check tickets and guide everyone.

 

 

Crowd was still settling in by that time.

 

Pre-match show

There were multiple performances by different artists.

 

And then players took the field for the warm up

 

 

 

Everyone was searching for Gill to find out whether he would play or not.

 

 

To be continued...

[Khota]

Nice post @Trichromatic. Thanks for sharing your experience with pictures.

 

What were the facilities like in stadium. How would you rate the stadium overall? Does it have a good feel to it?

[BH-BAIB]

Thanks for sharing. It does not build the vibe on TV of Mohali, Mumbai or Edens

[rish]

Looks amazing

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[First class]

Nice , thanks for sharing your experience. Feel bad for the people like you and other 100 K plus people in the stadium , Pak team devoid them from  a close thrilling match with their pathetic display. 

[IndianRenegade]

@Trichromatic WOW

 

thanks for sharing. please share more on how the crowd experience was, facilities at the venue.

[Austin 3:!6]

34 minutes ago, First class said:

Nice , thanks for sharing your experience. Feel bad for the people like you and other 100 K plus people in the stadium , Pak team devoid them from  a close thrilling match with their pathetic display. 

 

Pretty sure 100K people wanted an Indian win...close thrilling not many cares 

[Nikhil_cric]

4 hours ago, First class said:

Nice , thanks for sharing your experience. Feel bad for the people like you and other 100 K plus people in the stadium , Pak team devoid them from  a close thrilling match with their pathetic display. 

It was never going to be close. The gap in batting is quite massive.  Without Naseem, there's a gap in bowling as well.  

[putrevus]

What I would love to know is in-stadium facilities. When you are not allowed to take even water bottle.

 

How are bathrooms and food facilities.

Edited October 17, 2023 by putrevus

[Lone Wolf]

Amazing write up,  must have been some experience with 100k+ people singing... Maa tujhe Salaam

[Lord]

can you confirm how many times Dil Dil Pakistan was played?

[speed_thrills]

Write up complete kar ke thread banao otherwise nahi banao.

 

This to be continued nonsense is very uncool.

[Austin 3:!6]

50 minutes ago, speed_thrills said:

Write up complete kar ke thread banao otherwise nahi banao.

 

This to be continued nonsense is very uncool.

 

This is a hit thread like Bahubali...so there are 2 parts.

[Need4Speed]

Part 2 will be for paid members only..

just joking haha..

[Trichromatic]

On 10/15/2023 at 6:36 PM, Khota said:

Nice post @Trichromatic. Thanks for sharing your experience with pictures.

 

What were the facilities like in stadium. How would you rate the stadium overall? Does it have a good feel to it?

 

Facilities

Before the toss, we roamed around to check for facilities. There was free water in water cans with dispenser available everywhere outside the stands. I had attended matches at Eden Gardens, Chinnaswamy and Hyderabad earlier, but easy access to water was new to me. There were lot of food stalls. INR 150 for a veg burger/wrap wasn't that bad. Dominos has longest queue during breaks and some of their stalls even sold out quickly.

 

There was a stall of official ICC world cup merchandise.

 

What drew my attention was ambulance just outside the stands. I had never seen that before in any stadium. They had ramp built so that vehicles could reach stands directly and some of VIPs were being dropped directly there. Washrooms were much better than what I have seen at any other stadium in India.

 

Our seats were in the first row of stand right to stairway Indian dressing room. It's easy to notice that stadium is huge and there are no floodlights. Compared to other stadiums, it felt more ventilated and even during hot weather there some relief.

 

There were many seats blocked by bookmyshow folks and no one was seating there for entire match.

 

Water bottles wasn't allowed inside the stands. Vendors brought in cold drinks and icecreams which were getting sold quickly.

 

Toss/Match

Both teams took the field for practice. Have to say that Pakistani team getting booed during toss was new experience for me. Never seen this happening in any match. 

While there was lot of excitement initially, it died down rather quickly during first 25 overs of Pakistani batting. It felt boring and unattractive. Hot weather wasn't helping either. 

 

 

 

Once the collapse started, crowd got excited again. People were getting shocked at the frequency of wickets. Some people went out to get coke, pizza and returned back seeing Pakistan had lost 2 more wickets. 

 

Not going to write much about the cricketing performances as people know what happened there.

 

Innings Break

There were more musical performances during the innings break, which we didn't bother paying attention to.

 

2nd Inning

Lights were lit up in the first inning itself. Those lights are way better than floodlights that we have at other stadiums. 

Rohit Sharma absolutely lit up the stadium with his batting and with cooler evening crowd was fully into it. By the 20th over, everyone in stands was hoping that match finishes before 8 PM. 

 

Once the match was over, whole stadium cheering for Indian team, fireworks and maa tujhe salam was giving everyone goosebumps.

 

I left the stadium quickly as soon as match was over. As the spectators were heading back, locals were queuing up on the sideways to click photos and cheer them.

 

I had planned to travel back from Mumbai, but thanks to Rohit Sharma I managed to board early flight right after the match and returned back home. 

 

Later I realized that I didn't take photos during the match, but that cover drive from Kohli will remain etched in my memory forever. It was struck straight towards us and everyone was just in awe of the shot. For me, it was the highlight of the match.

[Trichromatic]

On 10/17/2023 at 8:07 PM, Lord said:

can you confirm how many times Dil Dil Pakistan was played?

 

I didn't hear Dil Dil Pakistan being played at the stadium. DJ was playing bollywood songs mostly.

[Trichromatic]

On 10/17/2023 at 2:14 AM, First class said:

Nice , thanks for sharing your experience. Feel bad for the people like you and other 100 K plus people in the stadium , Pak team devoid them from  a close thrilling match with their pathetic display. 

 

Match was dull for most of the part. Babar and Rizwan are good batters, but no offense their batting was quite boring. When Abdullah Shafique hit that straight lofted 4, people actually stood up to see where ball is going. There was hardly any reaction from the crowd when Rizwan Babar were batting. By reaction, I don't mean crowd will clap, but when opposition plays breathtaking strokes, Indian crowd watches in awe and worry. Sleep inducing batting during afternoon isn't exactly good thing to watch.

[Trichromatic]

I am planning to attend India England match also and hopefully share more from that match.

[Khota]

@Trichromatic very nice write up and thanks for sharing. I am glad you posted the pictures too. Appreciate it.

[Nonbeliever]

@Trichromatic thanks for the  update.  Can you kindly confirm at what time you left the hotel and how long did it take to enter the stadium. 

 

I mean how early one should  leave the hotel to reach the stadium in time. I will be traveling with kids and family so will need extra time also.  Expecting the same size of the crowd and india in the finals.