IPL Season 4
Day 24 – 27th April – 34 Sleeps to go
There have been a few days in between my last ramblings and so there is much to catch up on.
Monday was match day so the day itself was pretty quiet and then we headed off to the stadium of the match between CSK and Pune. The tournament is shaping up nicely with teams changing fortune with every match. The only really consistent team is The Mumbai Indians. Some teams performed badly to start with and are now coming good and others were doing well and are now not. I have almost given up predicting the winners. And I used to be quite good at it. Anyway CSK won the match and head off to their second encounter with Pune in Mumbai in a few days with the upper hand.
Tuesday I left early for Kochi. Our next match was scheduled for the 27th and so I wanted to be in Kochi to cover the training at the stadium. Kochi is so green. As you come into land the surrounding countryside is lovely. Rivers and waterways wind their way through the forest and it just looks awesome. It would be great to mountain bike through the forest.
Kochi is HOT. It is an incredible heat. I am not sure why but the heat hits you as soon as you leave the plane. It is a type of heat I have never felt before. Not really sure I could live here. It is also humid. The training session was not until 18:30 but even then it was so humid that you can stand completely still, only breathing and work up a sweat. Not Nice!
Headed for the hotel and had some supper. Mutton and coconut. Sounds a bit weird but was actually very nice. Coconut features heavily in the food of Kerala and the chicken curry is so full of flavour.
Today was match day. Vino andJacques arrived and we had breakfast at the hotel. I spent the day doing admin and just basically running my business. Albeit from a distance. The stadium in Kochi is huge. It’s actually really nice and very well lit for night matches. There was an awesome sunset with the sky turning orange whilst at the stadium. Orange is Kochi’s colours and so even the sky was supporting the home team.
What can I say about the match? Well it started off pretty average with the Chargers really not doing very well. To be honest I was pretty sure they would lose. Until the Tuskers came in to bat. Wickets fell so fast I could wire the images fast enough. At one stage they were 6 runs for 5 wickets. Unbelievable. Ishant Sharma took a five wicket haul for 12 runs. MOM for sure.
It was the worst performance I have seen at IPL so far although statistically not the worst ever.
Towards the end of the match my Canon EOS1dMk4 decided it would retire and the shutter picked up a fault. Error code 30. Thankfully it was after Ishant had done his business on the field. So I have one faulty camera and am in a small town in India with about 36 hours until the next match. I have the contact details for the Canon guys here so I emailed them. It was almost midnight though so will have to wait until morning to see what I can do. Hopefully a speedy repair or a loan body from Canon.
Headed for the hotel and collapsed at about 2am. We are supplsed to be going to thje elephant training centre tomorrow but I feel I will be trying to fix a camera instead.
Cities Visited: Chennai – Kochi
Tried anything new?
Total flights so far: 13
