The first-ever international cricket club tournament - the Airtel Champions League - begins on Thursday in Bangalore.

By Dominic Franks

8:00 p.m. 7th Otober, 2009. Outside the Chinnaswamy Stadium and the last ticket counters down their shutters despite the futile pleading of fans. All the tickets have been sold out. They are asked to come back on Thursday when the unsold tickets from coffee shops around Bangalore will go up on sale.

Inside the stadium premises there is a palpable sense of energy, a quiet scurrying around of hundreds in seemingly uncoordinated fashion as the stage is being.

Boys and girls holding flags and banners stand around the boundary ropes. They follow instructions that boom across the ground trying to co-ordinate their movements in preparation for Thursday's opening ceremony. A rainbow of laser beams crisscross the arena that reminds one of a scene straight out of a Hollywood heist. The entire stadium is shrouded in shadow with patches of the outfield occasionally being lit as powerful strobes swoop across the ground in powerful arcs of light as the strobes are tested.

The pitch remains covered, as are the practice strips at the far end of the ground. A few policeman mill around in the stands watching the rehearsal. On Thursday, there will be 1,200 of them providing fool-proof security arrangements.

Turnstiles, the first time they are ever being used at the Chinnaswamy stadium, are being erected. Electronic tickets will weed out the ones with illegitimate tickets. Electric drills and metal being sawed provide a constant backdrop of sound. The school and college students who will be part of the glittering opening ceremony aren't getting their act together. They are asked to rest. One rehearsal is over. There will be another in a little while.

The production control room looks deserted. The 32 cameras that will provide state-of-the-art television coverage are all in place. One man sits bent over a cricket sump as he cajoles a camera into a stump. Just above the empty press box, a fly cam hangs poised on wires that span the diameter of the ground. It is motionless, but Thursday it will float through the air. There is no sign of the stars who will bring the stadium alive on the morrow in a razzle dazzle of frenzied excitement. No Shaggy, no Jamelia, no Shaolin Monks- tonight is the night for the people who work the back stage.

There are no cricketers either. So people make do by posing for photographs with their favourite cricketing icons who dot the walls of the stadium.

The students take up their positions on the ground. Without warning, the laser beams begin a wild colourful dance. There are small gasps as all eyes in the stands turn skywards where the beams escape the roof. You can almost imagine the people outside the stadium looking up at the sky wondering what these stray lights portend. Suddenly all the lights of the stadium come on and you can hear a unified gasp. Then they begin to flash- on and off. The homogeneity of the collective gasp is replaced by ‘oohs' and ‘aahs' and when the lights stay on you can feel the thrill of an entire stadium being lit up.

But on Thursday, when the Airtel Champions League finally gets underway in front of 40,000 screaming, cricket-crazed fans, the Chinnaswamy stadium will really come to life.

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