The Delhi fan knows his team can finally break the semis jinx.

By Chayan Rastogi

I remember the 2008 days when I went to see all the Indian T20 series matches held at Firozshah Kotla wearing Delhi colours and how badly I wanted the second edition to stay in India. Honestly, what difference would it have made if they would have shifted General Elections to a later date? After all, cricket is more exciting any day!

Also, it was then that I realized that South Africa is very far from India and it would take almost a quarter of my CTC to travel back and forth to see a match there. Being a sensible ‘cricket crazy’, I cursed BCCI for not choosing places like Nepal and Bhutan, which were relatively cheap to travel and promised to treat myself to an outstation match in 2010.

Being true to my promise, I came to see Delhi’s first match of the season against neighbours Mohali. The scene at Mohali was exhilarating, the crowd was obviously pro-Mohali and the PCA stadium was looking fabulous under those huge flood-lights.

The built-up for this match was huge as neither of the team wanted to start their 14-match long campaign with a loss.

After put in to bat by Delhi skipper Gambhir, it didn’t took long for Delhi to draw first blood, courtesy excellent fielding and a direct hit.

My seat was much closer to Mohali dug-out and it was hard to see Delhi players, but I was not complaining as I could see an animated Preity Zinta, yelling and cheering for her team.

Delhi riding on a good bowling effort by spinner Mishra and Sri Lankan all-rounder Mahroof restricted Mohali to a modest 142.

In reply, Delhi started with trademark Sehwag boundaries but were soon in trouble after a breakthrough over by Sreesanth in which he scalped Sehwag and Dilshan. Things were not looking good when Delhi also lost De Villiers but man of the match Gambhir looked in sublime touch and with his boundaries ridden half-century, almost guided the team to a five-wicket victory which came in a tense last over.

At the conclusion of the match, the beautiful fireworks lit up the sky but they did little to hide the upset face of Preity Zinta, who was disappointed by lacklustre performance of her team.

On the other hand, I am pretty happy with Delhi win nonetheless, and will now gleefully feast on ‘butter chicken’ in dinner without any post-defeat trauma.

Delhi will now leave for Ahmedabad to take on Jaipur and I will drive back to ‘Saadi Dilli’ after this amazing weekend. Just wishing that Preity Zinta was also on our side!