Dhoni, even at 41, is the only jersey in town

AHMEDABAD:  IT’S 4 PM in Ahmedabad on Sunday and unlike the hours to come, the Sun is still beating down. Vehicular entry to the Narendra Modi Stadium is stopped around 650m from the main entrance.  Fans have already started coming, with the cabs and autos dropping them at the intersection from which they will have to walk a few minutes to get to the entrance.

The mood through the 650m walk is clear — all yellow. On the road leading to the Stadium, there are vendors selling knockoff jerseys of Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans, especially the former. And with every vendor, you can see a group of fans bargaining their way to a cheap yellow shirt. All you can hear through the walk are shouts of ‘Dhoni Dhoni,’ and CSK, CSK shirt’ from the vendors. One of them shouts ‘Aaya Dhoni Aaya, lelo Chennai shirt’ (Dhoni has come to Ahmedabad, come and buy the CSK jersey).

Ashish Parjapathi, a local vendor who paints names and logos of teams on faces for every IPL game in Ahmedabad, says that Chennai and Dhoni have been the difference from other games to the final. In fact, he even wants Dhoni to lift the trophy. Deepak Drdbr, another vendor who paints, says, “We have a lot of fans here (in Ahmedabad) for Dhoni. We love Dhoni and have to support Chennai Super Kings. The other day had 95 per cent Gujarat fans, today (Sunday) we will have 95 per cent support for Chennai.” He may be 41, but he remains very popular.

It is not just the locals. Chandra, another vendor, has travelled all the way from Avadi, Chennai in a desperate attempt to sell whatever is left of the Chennai jerseys and caps she has. “We sold flags and jerseys in all the Chennai games at Chepauk (MA Chidambaram Stadium), we also travelled to Hyderabad and Bengaluru for Chennai games. This is the first time I am here in Gujarat. We have come as a group of 20 people. We did not expect so many people to sell Chennai T-shirts. If we had known, we probably would not have come,” she says. The most popular name on the back of the jersey is no surprise. Dhoni. 

Some of the vendors, in a tempo, were giving away Titans’ jerseys for free with fans chasing them down. As the evening went by,  rain made thousands of fans who had come in early wait anxiously. Such was the intermittent nature of the storms that the moment the rain slowed down, you could hear a massive roar with fans running towards the lower stands.

When hopes of a start were raised after the rains stopped at 9 PM,  the chants began again as the teams started training. The support for Chennai might not be 95 per cent as Drdbr said, but the chants of “CSK... CSK”  and “Dhoni.. Dhonii” surely engulfed ‘Hardik Hardik’ in the stands. However, another storm cell moved into the Stadium to leave the fans disappointed. It was that kind of a day.