Mumbai: Virat Kohli, Hardik Pandya and all other Indian players sang ‘Vande Mataram’ along with the whole Wankhede crowd during their T20 World Cup-winning celebration on Thursday. After a long hectic day where the Indian players met PM Modi in Delhi, Rohit Sharma and his boys had an open-bus victory parade in Mumbai from Nariman Point to the Wankhede Stadium. The moment brought back memories from 2011 when the whole crowd chanted the same as MS Dhoni hit the winning six against Sri Lanka in the ODI World Cup final.
The Men in Blue entered the ground amid loud cheers and were felicitated by the BCCI with a Rs 125 crore prize money for winning the T20 World Cup for the second time in history. Following the felicitation programme, the whole team had a victory lap around the stadium where the players were caught singing the patriotic song.
वंदे मातरम pic.twitter.com/j5D4nMMdF9
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 4, 2024
Meanwhile, an ocean of humanity greeted the victory parade of the T20 World Cup winning Indian team in South Mumbai’s Marine Drive as thousands of passionate fans gathered to catch a glimpse of their favourite stars, bringing the traffic to a complete standstill. The open bus parade, which was delayed by more than a couple of hours, started from the National Centre for Performing Arts (NCPA) in Nariman Point post 7:30 PM and went till the Wankhede Stadium.
In 2007, Rohit Sharma was the youngest member of the Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s epoch-making squad and now at 37, for him to lead his T20 World Champion Indian cricket team on a victory parade must have given him a sense of deja vu.
He is now the oldest member of this current team, ‘been there and done that’ and even as the faces around him changed in more than one-and-a-half decades, the now-retired Indian T20 skipper remained a constant for all these years.
AN UNFORGETTABLE DAY
#TeamIndia | #T20WorldCup | #Champions pic.twitter.com/FeT7VNV5lB
— BCCI (@BCCI) July 4, 2024
As the bus passed through the sea of humans, his mind must have travelled back to that September morning in 2007 when Mumbai was as drenched as it was this Thursday evening. Chants of “Mumbaicha Raja, Rohit Sharma” (Who’s the King of Mumbai? Rohit Sharma) reverberated through the roads.
Then there was Hardik Pandya, who probably found organic acceptance, after a stellar T20 World Cup campaign as he was the first to lift the trophy and show it to the fans. The once jeered ‘Mumbai Indian’ was the cheered ‘Indian’ in Mumbai. The ‘Maximum City’ was ready to shower ‘Maximum Love’ for the colourful ‘Baroda Bomber’, who has made Mumbai his home.
The players lapped up, the frenzy, mass euphoria for a nation that loves its cricketers way more than the game itself. A glimpse of Virat Kohli was what many would have longed for. The King didn’t disappoint. In fact, he pulled skipper along with Suryakumar Yadav and Axar Patel to dance to the beats of famous Nashik Dholwalas at Wankhede soon after they arrived at the ground.
Earlier, the Indian team could only fly from New Delhi around 3:42 PM after a breakfast meeting with the Indian PM Narendra Modi, having returned from Barbados in the wee hours. The Wankhede Stadium here was thrown open to fans, who filled up the stands within minutes to celebrate the team’s title triumph.
After landing in the city, their aircraft got the famous ‘Water Salute’ at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport’s Terminal 2. The players walked out of the airport with a sea of fans and media waiting for them for several hours.
