It was the 3rd of October 2015. I was to be at the stadium by 5:00 p.m for the opening ceremony. It was already 4:45 on my watch. I rolled the dice and took my two-wheeler to the Marina Arena. The parking was almost a km away from the stadium. I half-ran half-walked my way braving the slushy mud and stagnant water and reached the media box. My colleague from Firstpost was already sitting comfortably without a sweat on him. That day I decided, make it early or don’t make it at all.
Since then, I have been to the Marina Arena five other times barring the 4-0 thrashing of Delhi Dynamos. On all days, I was in the stadium between 5:00 - 5:30 p.m. The routine was to get a couple of bottles of water and sit on the top row where a good unhindered view was available. The WI-fi network after the second match was pretty good and barely troubled me, so the time in hand was good for the research on the teams.
Chennaiyin FC fans during the rain-hit match against Mumbai City FC. ISL
The other thing the punctuality saved me were from the rains. The last four home matches starting with the one against North-East United FC were affected by rains. The first of those was actually interrupted for an hour due to lightning. The pre-match routine was scary. The plug points in the media box were leaking water and the support staff rued leaving them all open aired. We started seeing plastic covered switchboards since then and the staff smartly pushed the boards beneath the granite slabs once rain came.
The media box being open meant we were sprayed whenever the rain got heavy, sending us scourging for higher ground and cover for the laptops mainly. The last game, an absolutely bizarre idea was announced. The media, if willing, could cover the match from the press conference room where the match was being telecast on a big television set. What was the point of actually making it to the stadium then, I wondered.
The fans on the other hand, as always, built up the din slowly. Even at 5 pm you can find a handful of supporters in the A stand waiting for the pre-match warm-up. The crowd trickles in slow and steady even after kickoff. Slowly the noise gathers and the ‘knowledgeable Chennai crowd’ oohs and aahs together with the flow of the game. The recognition for hard workers like Thoi Singh, Bernard Mendy, Stiven Mendoza was heart-warming.
In the last home game on 1st of December 2015 against Mumbai – the peak of the deluge in Chennai that left the city stunned - ground staff who reached at 8am in the morning were wondering how they would reach home (some as far as Tiruvallur, the outskirts of the city). The cameramen were drenched, but made sure their equipment were bone dry. 12,636 fans made it through all kinds of water - right, left and from top.
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I made it up and down simply using the local MTC buses (yes, the buses were running even at 10:30 pm), thanks to driver Sampath Kumar -driver and Narayanan - conductor of 53E, two good Samaritans who ran that particular bus non-stop the entire day despite the flooding.
As Chennaiyin FC shift base to Pune for their ‘home’ leg of the semifinal, the Marina Arena has officially hosted its last game of ISL 2015. The city, from what I know, was keen on seeing the players one more time in the big match. The city is still recovering from a body blow dealt by the nature, showing immense solidarity throughout the ordeal. The fans would have rallied behind the team on a scale not seen before, of that there is little doubt. But, perhaps rightly so, there are more pressing things for Chennai to address and the decision to move the match is understandable.
What I will really miss, at the end of my two-month fling with ISL as a reporter, is the adventure of going to the home match, simultaneously enjoying and analysing the action on the pitch, and returning home a satisfied man. For what it’s worth, I doubt I am alone in that regard.
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