Festive crowd greets World Cup

A group of supporters represent the red and green provide their voice to Bangladesh's cause during the opening game of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2011 at the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium yesterday.

The biggest advantage of watching a game from the stands at the side of the realistic and not covered in an air-conditioned press box is that you miss nothing of the buzz, the group heartbeat of the thousands who are inside the stadium egging on their individual to do better and larger things.

So it turned out to be a quite inspirational and reinvigorating knowledge for this journalist to renovate ties with the gallery and it will stay a unforgettable one as there couldn't have been a better occasion than the opening match of the World Cup 2011 between Bangladesh and India.

The intensity of the atmosphere, the intensity of the emotions kept building during the morning as all roads in Dhaka apparently led to a common destination: the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur.

For a radius of more than a kilometre either side of the stadium, vehicular movement was restricted. But that did very little to dampen the joyful mood of the fans. The thousands were not in a mood to complain, they were unbothered about the strict security measures that on instances even amounted to being hassled. They were in a mood to rejoice; to rejoice the advent of the World Cup, and on a bigger note, to rejoice cricket.

Selim, a student from Mirpur, was holding his shirt in his hand as he had painted his body in green. Proudly he said: "I will not wear a shirt today, I will be highlighted in green and support the Tigers."

But it wasn't no more than Bangladeshis. There were some Australians on their holiday and Europeans too living in Dhaka who chose the day to take on the Tigers as their own.

Inside Sher-e-Bangla, the modern and inspiring home of Bangladesh cricket, the environment reached fever pitch. First it was the national anthem and then when the coin smiled for the Tigers.

But the choice by Shakib Al Hasan to field first was taken with suspicion at the start which turned into disappointment as Virender Sehwag and co stamped their authority on the game.But to live up to the good name of the Dhaka crowd, they were appreciating every good stroke played by the Indian batsmen.

Sehwag dead for the pavilion for an reliable 175-run knock and by the time he had left the crowd grew into such a generous mood that they almost felt sad for the Nazafgarh man for not reaching a double hundred. And the mood changed little afterwards in the game as people chanted and shouted well into the night.