And how!
Although I have never actually watched a match live on a stadium before, even in Lanka, there's something awesome in cheering for your team in another country. And the feeling is just super awesome when you actually do win!
We bought the tickets ages ago - and around 50% of the Lankans I know in Melbourne were planning to attend - never mind the weather forecast was something awful for Wednesday.
As we later found out, the 'papare band' plays at Gate 6, Southern stand and we were at Gate 3 - but we had a good Lankan crowd in that stand too - although nothing compared to Gate 6! And maaan what a crowd that was! Evidently only around 20,000 people turned up at the MCG, and I'm positive around 75% of them were Lankans!
From the vibrant blue and yellow colours, the Lion flags, the Papare music, and the loud cheer, Australia might have been playing in Sri Lanka instead of the other way round!
The loud Lankan cheering got somewhat subdued after losing 8 wickets, and thats the only time the Aussie cheering picked up - sort of. But even that died down as Malinga and Angelo made it clear that they were not giving up. And so from then on, we cheered every ball, screaming at the top of our voice when they made a run.
Yep we enjoyed every single second of it - even the four losers who had the nerve to sit in the middle of us and cheer for the other team!
Now of course everyone has the right to cheer for whoever the want, but really do you really truly feel that ecstatic when you're not even from that country to begin with? Yeah I'm talking about these 4 Indian guys who seemed to get an orgasm every time a Lankan wicket fell. Well, two might have been Lankan as they spoke Tamil but the as the other two spoke in Hindi, they were definitely Indian. I wonder if they thought they get marks for cheering the home team in a PR application. Hmmm...
On a more sombre note, we saw an elderly person - Lankan by the look of it - had suffered something like a heart attack or a stroke near Gate 6 during the intermission. The medics were performing CPR and there were some people nearby who were crying... I just hope he's OK.
Although I have never actually watched a match live on a stadium before, even in Lanka, there's something awesome in cheering for your team in another country. And the feeling is just super awesome when you actually do win!
We bought the tickets ages ago - and around 50% of the Lankans I know in Melbourne were planning to attend - never mind the weather forecast was something awful for Wednesday.
As we later found out, the 'papare band' plays at Gate 6, Southern stand and we were at Gate 3 - but we had a good Lankan crowd in that stand too - although nothing compared to Gate 6! And maaan what a crowd that was! Evidently only around 20,000 people turned up at the MCG, and I'm positive around 75% of them were Lankans!
From the vibrant blue and yellow colours, the Lion flags, the Papare music, and the loud cheer, Australia might have been playing in Sri Lanka instead of the other way round!
The loud Lankan cheering got somewhat subdued after losing 8 wickets, and thats the only time the Aussie cheering picked up - sort of. But even that died down as Malinga and Angelo made it clear that they were not giving up. And so from then on, we cheered every ball, screaming at the top of our voice when they made a run.
Yep we enjoyed every single second of it - even the four losers who had the nerve to sit in the middle of us and cheer for the other team!
Now of course everyone has the right to cheer for whoever the want, but really do you really truly feel that ecstatic when you're not even from that country to begin with? Yeah I'm talking about these 4 Indian guys who seemed to get an orgasm every time a Lankan wicket fell. Well, two might have been Lankan as they spoke Tamil but the as the other two spoke in Hindi, they were definitely Indian. I wonder if they thought they get marks for cheering the home team in a PR application. Hmmm...
On a more sombre note, we saw an elderly person - Lankan by the look of it - had suffered something like a heart attack or a stroke near Gate 6 during the intermission. The medics were performing CPR and there were some people nearby who were crying... I just hope he's OK.
At one stage the TV commentators were talking about attendance, one of them jokingly said recorded number of tickets sold were 30901 and 901 must be the Australians.
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