Five-time champions Mumbai Indians kicked off their IPL 2022 campaign on Sunday afternoon against the Delhi Capitals. The match got underway at the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai, at 3.30 PM.
However, even before the start of the game, fans at the stadium expressed their frustrations and displease by the facilities. One fan on Twitter slammed the BCCI for providing simple plastic chairs in the scorching heat of Mumbai – that too for tickets priced at 2000 and above.
The user, Sanchit Desai, posted a pic of the chairs aligned at the Brabourne on Twitter to let everyone else, and the BCCI, know the dross sitting arrangement provided for the fans. The plastic chairs make it really uncomfortable for fans to sit and watch and enjoy the game during the immense heat in daytime.
Surely for 3K ticket prices, acche seats toh de dete. WTF Brabourne?
Pic credit – @vlp1994 #IPL2022 #DCvsMI #DCvMI pic.twitter.com/sk7arwPe9a— Sanchit Desai (@sanchitd43) March 27, 2022
The tournament is being played across four venues – Wankhede Stadium and Brabourne Stadium, and DY Patil Sports Academy in Navi Mumbai and Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune.
Some franchises had earlier raised objections because Mumbai Indians have got home games in their city. But the BCCI explained that they wanted to avoid air travel – the board believes which was the cause of covid-19 transmission among franchises last year that brought the tournament to a halt – and hence chose Mumbai and Pune as the venues for the league stage.
Rohit Sharma, the Mumbai Indians captain, was also asked about his views on his side getting home matches. Sharma pointed out that they haven’t played in Mumbai for the past two seasons and most of their players are new to the franchise.
“It’s a relatively new team, a lot of new guys have come in,” Rohit told the media on Wednesday. “Seventy to 80% of the squad hasn’t played in Bombay before. Only myself, Surya [Suryakumar Yadav], [Kieron] Pollard, Ishan [Kishan] and [Jasprit] Bumrah have played in Bombay, others have not played [that much]. So there is no such thing as an added advantage. We all are playing in Bombay after two years. In fact, the other franchises played in Bombay last year. We didn’t get to play.”
