AHMEDABAD: AT 10.54 PM on Sunday when the giant screens at the stadium in Ahmedabad displayed the message that the 2023 IPL final between Chennai Super Kings and Gujarat Titans has been moved to the reserve day May 29, because of rain, it ended a five-hour-long frustrating wait for the fans who had flocked the venue.
However, their frustration did not end there. Such was the thunderstorm that the city had received that night — 41mm of rain between 6-8 PM — several roads were waterlogged. Add to the fact that close to a lakh people were trying to get out of the stadium at the same time, and it was chaos. The cars were moving like ants in a flood of fans. Former Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden even posted a video on his Instagram where fans had to take a long walk in knee-length water. But most fans had a bigger worry at hand — extending their stays and rebooking their return tickets. After all, thousands of them had travelled from across the country to watch the final.
Karthik (Dharmapuri), Atim (Madurai) and Pavithran (Dharmapuri) from Tamil Nadu had reached Ahmedabad on Sunday morning and spent the day in the executive lounge in the railway station before getting to the ground. Their plan was to finish the game and get a train back to Mumbai on Monday morning, before taking a flight later in the evening. “It took us one hour to get out of the ground and when we reached the railway station to get the luggage it was 2 AM. Finding a hotel was more difficult. We eventually got a room at 3 AM. Our flight tickets, which we had booked for Rs 5,000 is now cancelled. We had to spend `15,000 to book our return flight,” said Karthik.
Kartik Kannan, a Chennaiite from Bengaluru had walked back 4.5kms — his route wasn’t as much waterlogged — to the hotel only to find out they increased the price by 30 per cent for an extension. “I realised I could reserve a new booking for the same price and did that,” he says. Similarly, he was cautious about the return travel and booked a ticket around 9.30 PM itself as a precautionary measure. He had to spend an extra Rs 7,600 for the new tickets.
That said, his friends weren’t as lucky as him. Prem, who had travelled from Munich, Germany to watch the IPL final had dropped off his luggage at his home in Chennai before hopping on a flight to Ahmedabad on Saturday. Since he rescheduled only after getting back to the hotel, Prem had to spend an extra Rs 23,000 for the return flights. Another friend of Kartik had spent an extra Rs 16,000 on the same.
Meanwhile, there were quite a few who could not afford to extend their stays and some of them were even selling their tickets outside the stadium. Some of them also had the issue of not having the full physical ticket as it got damaged in the rain and hence could not watch the game on Monday.
Those who were able to extend echoed very similar sentiments. “We came all the way, travelling 1500 km to watch Chennai and MS Dhoni. The money we lost, we can earn it, but we will never know if we can come and see Dhoni play again. It’s a wish since my school days — to watch him in a final at least once,” said Karthik and Pavithran before running to enter the venue as they were only a few minutes away from watching Dhoni walk out for the toss.
