One had to leave really early for M Chinnaswamy Stadium that day. It was said that the roads would be chock-a-block, and traffic would go haywire. To make sure that you got there on time, you had to be ahead of time. To make things further complicated, there was a rally taken out by the local Tibetan community, protesting against the Beijing Olympics that was to be held later that year.
This was April 18, 2008, a day that changed the cricketing ecosystem for good. It was the inaugural day of the Indian Premier League. Royal Challengers Bangalore were taking on Kolkata Knight Riders. There were cheerleaders for a sporting event in India for the first time. Cricket was getting married to entertainment, with Shah Rukh Khan in attendance.
There was enormous excitement, the anticipation of something big and, also, a certain amount of apprehension. For the first time in India, cricket was going to compete with soaps and serials for the prime-time television slot. Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi or IPL? Who would win? I was there with my senior editor, who opined that IPL stood no chance.
Let me not get into what happened in the years thereafter, but just say that it was a blinding spectacle that night, exactly 15 years ago. Uninitiated yet to such blockbuster cricket events and witness to a flop laser show at Eden Gardens during the 1996 World Cup, the Indian cricket fan saw something at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru that had never happened in a cricket event in the country until then.
The Day World Cricket Changed Forever
Talking about that day, people mostly refer to Brendon McCullum, for very valid reasons. His explosion with the bat set the tone for things to come, no doubt, but there was so much more. Some mini-Olympic opening ceremony it was. Sparks flying, loudspeakers blaring, immaculately choreographed shows and Bollywood stars adding glamour to the glitz – it was unprecedented.
One had to be at the ground the previous day actually, to know what was to come. It was a full-scale dress rehearsal. All the audio accompaniments were played, the cheerleaders were going through their drills in searing heat and it was a whole new experience for a cricket reporter hitherto accustomed only to pre-match press conferences featuring the captains of the two teams.
Bengaluru on those two days opened our eyes to something very new. We knew cricketers had practice sessions a day before any match. Here, the KKR cheerleaders from the US were going through their practice sessions under a punishing sun. I could never have imagined that they would do such rigorous training while preparing for a show, in a country alien to them.
In many ways, April 18, 2008, was not about cricket. Commercial stakes apart, there was a dash of celebrities around, who like us, also did not know what kind of cricket was going to be on offer or what kind of role they were going to play in defining what the IPL is essentially about. Let me also say that even the cricketers had little idea what was going to happen, or how this was going to change the cricket’s landscape and mindscape forever.
And of course it was all very quiet when I was trudging back to my hotel a few hours after the match, in the wee hours of morning. The roads that had been brimming with activities and hectic movement were deserted. The hustle and bustle had been replaced by the tired movements of stray cars. But, we all thought that this was the beginning of a major disquiet in cricket. And we were right.