Cup of joy comes home: Team India returns with World Cup trophy
India's T20 World Cup champions received a hero's welcome with massive crowds, a victory parade, and a felicitation at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
In November last year, as the ODI world champions Australia returned home, with captain Pat Cummins carrying his own luggage out of the airport, they were greeted by a handful of media personnel and a couple of black-tied officials.
The welcome home for the T20 world champions of India, safe to say, had a fair few more. And then some.
From the time Team India landed at 6am at Delhi airport, greeted by a huge gathering of supporters carrying placards, to when the victory parade began in Mumbai at 7.35pm, tens of thousands that swelled into lakhs turned up to catch a glimpse of their superstars and the much-awaited silverware.
In between, the Indian players and the support staff, accompanied by BCCI president Roger Binny and secretary Jay Shah, met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on a busy Thursday that was just about getting started for them.
Read Here: Mumbai makes it a day to remember
When it ended, after a nearly hour-long parade through a sea of humanity at Marine Drive on a kilometre-long stretch that culminated with a felicitation at the Wankhede Stadium, captain Rohit Sharma was overwhelmed.
“This trophy, of course, it means so much for us but it is for the entire nation,” he said in front of packed Wankhede stands. “The amount of desperation we had (to win the trophy), the people I guess had more.”
The hysteria, no matter the passing rain or the seemingly endless wait, was proof.
“Mumbai ka raja, Rohit Sharma!” shouted some teens in unison at around 3pm, whistling away as the Wankhede Stadium approached. This was, by the way, when Rohit and his men were still mid-air, halfway into their flight to Mumbai from Delhi.
When the “Mumbai ka raja” and his triumphant troops finally made their way atop an open-air bus to kick-start their victory parade -- around 2.5 hours later than the original schedule that left many standing on the streets a touch restless -- the multitude assembled by the breezy Queen’s Necklace let loose.
Read Here: Modi meets triumphant T20 stars
Virat Kohli, amid deafening chants of “Kohli, Kohli”, began the public party by first holding aloft the World Cup trophy and then kissing it. Hardik Pandya also stood right in front, animatedly fist-bumping to the masses as they reciprocated the love. This was the same man who was often heavily booed by fans playing in and for the same city in the Indian Premier League a couple of months ago. Jasprit Bumrah and his gang of match-winning bowlers took turns to step forward and engage with the crowd.
Standing towards the centre of the bus, Rohit and Rahul Dravid, the captain-coach duo, lifted each other’s arms and hugged. Rohit would gradually head to the back of the bus and wave along, leading from behind for a change. And Dravid being Dravid, retreated to clicking pictures of his boys having the time of their lives.
“I am going to miss this love,” Dravid said at Wankhede Stadium. “What we have seen today is absolutely incredible. What we have seen ever since we landed in India is incredible. I have been told that these scenes were witnessed all over India.”
As a player, Dravid never got the feel of this as a World Cup winner. As a country, it had been over a decade since its cricket team was placed on a pedestal and paraded through the streets.
Everyone who flocked the stretch of road in South Mumbai, coming from far and away pockets of the city, wanted a piece of the champions. From the men who’d climbed through branches of trees to those who’d checked into a posh five-star overlooking the street and were clicking pictures through their room windows. From a wheelchair-bound woman and a budding para badminton player to those free-spirited college kids who were too young to remember the rare times such scenes were witnessed in the history of Indian cricket.
Rahul Shah, one such teen from a nearby college that he bunked for the day, said he would get goosebumps seeing visuals on television of MS Dhoni and his team being similarly paraded through the city’s streets the last time India were world T20 champions back in 2007.
This time, through a belated bash that began in Barbados and carried on in Mumbai via a quick stopover in Delhi, he had seen it in person.