Domino dancing

The only moment of quiet came at about ten o’clock, when God shimmied forward a few steps in the way he’s being doing since before time itself, swung his arms and launched the little white pill high up in the air. Initially this was greeted by yet another chorus of hooting, hollering and standing on plastic seats from at least 20,000 devotees in the temple, until they started to realised that a shady character in red – and possibly a forked tail – was standing exactly at the point where the thing was set to come down. Heaven forfend. Sachin was out.

Like I said, it really was the only moment of quiet on Tuesday night, at the Indian Premier League game between Mumbai and Punjab. The fans don’t seem to need much encouragement to make vast amounts of noise but they get it anyway, with endless nonsense on the PA of the “are you ready?!?!” variety. After every four, or six, or a wicket, or the end of the over, the alarmingly thin Eastern European-looking dancing girls come on and gyrate with pompoms and a really bored expression on their faces for about 20 seconds, which also encourages the (mostly male) crowd to do some more whooping. And of course every couple of minutes something happens on the pitch to make it essential to blow into your rolled-up paper horn, like a good shot, or a fine piece of bowling, or Sachin moving one of his fingers.

Apparently Punjab’s most iconic player, Yuvraj Singh, has previous with the Mumbai crowd, and they don’t let him forget it with a relentless chant of ‘Yuvi sucks’ whenever there’s nothing else to do. Handily enough he gets out for a miserable 2 with a pathetically bad shot, which cheers up Mumbai no end. It’s a strange experience witnessing this crude partisanship: it seems mostly inspired by watching English football on ESPN, but the IPL teams have only existed for two years and the players are almost all just bought at auction, sold to the highest bidder. So while there’s enthusiastic bias in the stands, it’s all ultimately good-natured because no-one actually cares that much who wins. The ribald abuse is just part of what the evening’s really about, which is a good night out.

Funnily enough, the most interesting moment comes at the instant of inevitable victory for Mumbai (Punjab are the most rubbish team in the IPL), when for a brief second I fear that all my friends are about to die. It’s a pretty basic terrace, with each row of plastic chairs held together with a bamboo cane under the legs: and when Mumbai win, some people a few rows back who’ve been standing on their chairs jump up and accidentally push them forward into the ones in front. You then get a few rows of chaotic but still effective dominos, with plastic chairs and people all falling over at once, and from my vantage point (I’ve taken to sitting on a low wall by now) I have visions of one of those news items you occasionally read about a temple stampede in Uttar Pradesh where 116 people die. Luckily my chums hold firm against the tide of plastic (that’s the British stiff upper lip for you), and disaster is narrowly averted. Health and safety, India-style.