India played host to the Nehru Cup back in August 2009 in Delhi’s Ambedkar Stadium, as the revival of the bi-annual competition that the Indian football calendar used to have continued.
The illustrious Nehru Cup, whose previous winners include Uruguay, Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary, was reinstated to the Indian football calendar back in 2007 after a 10 year hiatus, with the last one being won by Iraq in 1997.
The tournament was aimed at giving the national team, stricken by the lack of competitive action, some much needed games to improve their performances and confidence as desired by, then coach, Bob Houghton.
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After a rather shaky start, 1-0 defeat to Lebanon, things improved and India got back to back wins over Sri Lanka and Kyrgyzstan, and their place in the final was sealed when Lebanon was defeated by Syria.
India met Syria in the final, who were the overwhelming favourites after going unbeaten through the round-robin format.
After this brief introduction of how India made the finals, let us begin on how I made my journey to the finals.
It was a normal day as I came back from College and kept wondering if the cable guy will give me the joy of watching India play in a final and put on the erstwhile Zee Sports, with my DTH continuing to block it at the time.
My brother came back from his college and I put forward the suggestion that if we make a quick decision and went to the game, we might not need to depend on the purviews of the cable man.
The quick decision was essential in the case, as we only had an hour and considering Delhi’s traffic situation during peak hours a simple journey could take hours.
One thing which I misjudged was the ticket situation; considering the non-existence popularity of the game I had expected that we should be able to get the tickets on the gate, but the determination of the Delhi people to turn up and show support to the team, albeit some brash attitude along the way, left me dumb-founded.
I have been to the Feroz Shah Kotla ground a few times before and knew the Ambedkar Stadium was right next to it, so had a route planned, but the turn was blocked, so my crazy driving, which I continued to boast to my brother, through the sheer traffic till then was suddenly looking like a waste of a time.
The clock was running and the traffic which looked heavy on the first part of the drive, suddenly magnified as we reached the ITO juncture.
We had to somehow beat the traffic and find another way to reach the stadium as quickly as we can. Some calls were made to find an alternative route, but they were of no use.
Renedy taking the free-kick
We continued to crawl at snail’s pace and our decision to make the journey continuing to look stupid by the minute. It got even more foolish when we were told that Zee Sports had shown up on the television screens.
We were now an hour and a half into our journey and the game had already started, but we were still no way near the stadium. Our curses at the Delhi traffic continued as the desperation of missing the game was increasing.
Finally we reached the Ambedkar Stadium, and if we thought it was going to be plain sailing from now on, we were in for rude shock.
As we looked for parking space, the seas of people swarming around from gate to gate of the Ambedkar Stadium left us in awe. Despite the dreaded outlook that the media portrays of an average Indian football fan, the numbers showed how much people cared about the Indian team.
And so after our two hours of excruciatingly tiring drive to the stadium, a journey which was supposed to take 40 minutes at best, we were facing a new problem; no tickets!
With the ground packed to the rafters, and almost same amount of people roaming outside, ok may be a little exaggeration on my part, but it did feel like that at the time, getting inside the stadium won’t be easy, we knew.
Some daring people had resorted to climbing over the buildings outside the stadium so that they could catch a glimpse of the game, even though it looked like a medium for watching the game, we just could not get the courage of repeating their actions and resorted to finding alternative options.
We went to all the gates looking for an entrance; talked to people if somehow we could get an entry in ‘Delhi’ style, as much as I always try to avoid it, we had to just try it on the night; but nothing seemed to work and every roar from the ground reminded us of the action we were missing.
Just as it looked like we were down and out, and the only action from the match we will be able to watch will be the sneak peeks from the gates, we saw a ray of hope when we saw some people climbing over the wall of the neighbouring Kotla. We had seen the lots of fans standing in the Kotla stands before, but didn’t have a clue on how to reach over there initially.
Considering how our journey had been till now, if this was suppose to as simple as climbing the wall, a herculean task in itself, it would have meant that we didn’t understand how all this works.
So, the climbing the wall also involved tricky things; firstly we had to decide if we wanted go through with it, a resounding yes was echoed by both of yes; secondly, we now needed the courage to do the task, a big thing for me, but we were so close to the match that I just followed my younger brother, even though I was little sceptical inside.
We stood over a scooter, which helped us climb on to the tree adjacent to the wall, from the tree we had to walk to the wall and then jump down from there. Whilst we faced difficulties, but we were able to do the part first part till the tree, until reaching the wall, and this is when we heard that the game had reached half-time with no team on the score sheet till now.
Pitch Invasion
With this news, along came the security guards, who got to know about our wall and so came in to scare us away, but this wasn’t going to stop us, surely not after spending two and half hours trying to get this far. So as soon as he went away, we went for it again and finally succeeded in jumping, albeit with the help of a construction worker and a sum of 100 rupees, a paltry sum to pay for the spectacle which followed.
All the buildings in the Kotla which provided a view to the game were occupied by fans, so we chose the closest building in fear that someone may throw us away if we didn’t get inside quickly. The number of fans who were standing there was so huge that it made me think later on that it’s not possible that all of them followed the same path that me and my brother did to reach over there; the wall wouldn’t have been able to withstand that.
Second half had just started and we were finally watching it; a feeling which gave us immense satisfaction, a view which resembled the heights of the grounds like Camp Nou. The game was goalless at full time, and it went to extra time, but not a single person complained about it. The atmosphere when Renedy Singh scored in the 117th minute of the game on a hot Delhi evening was something that I thought could never be matched, only to be eclipsed by noise made by the fans when Subrata Paul made the match-winning penalty save.
A pitch invasion followed, and after the hugs and congratulatory messages were exchanged at Kotla, we made our way to the Ambedkar, and thankfully the gates were duly opened to allow the people to leave, most of whom had made it inside through dangerous ways.
We shouted, we cheered, we laughed and we almost cried. The game was as unpredictable as our journey to the game. At the time we never expected the game to turn out the way as it did. Despite all the effort we needed to put to reach the game, there wasn’t a single moment when both of us didn’t had a smile on our faces after the game, and it continued like this for the next few days.
