I’m halfway through a blog entry all about India so far but I’m interrupting that process to briefly tell you about my night at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in New Delhi – the ground where, as you all know, Bert Sutcliffe scored 230* against India in the drawn third test of the 1955 tour (which remains the highest test score on the ground to this day incidentally). Tonight, it was a very different kind of cricket….different to a 1950s test match, and different in a few ways to some of the T20 cricket we have at home.

For a start, there wasn’t a spare seat in the stadium – 48000 people were there and I’m pretty sure 47999 of them were Indians. That many people can make a lot of noise, and they certainly did so constantly throughout the match. The only time they were quiet was when they were eating – popcorn, vege burgers, trays of naan bread and curry being the main things. Drinks were Coke or water only, served in paper cups….no bottles are sold as they can get thrown onto the ground. And not a single beer in the stadium – the rules strictly forbid alcohol, so the crowd just gets high on their favourite sport and watches the cricket instead. The lack of beer does affect their performance though – the ground announcer tried several times to get a Mexican Wave started, and not one made it right round the ground…..hopeless!

Security was extremely tight (apparently there was a terrorism threat before the game) and all spectators went through metal detectors while bags were X-rayed. I had a small number of coins in my bag and had to hand them over – because the crowd might throw money at players who aren’t performing up to standard. It was pointless telling the security guards that the chances of me voluntarily throwing any cash away were less than zero – but I only managed to “find” 2 x 10 rupee coins, rather than give them all up!

Everyone in the crowd seems to be an expert on cricket and I was very popular with those around me once they found out I was more or less Brendon McCallum’s neighbour (well, they think in a country of only 4 million people, let alone a city of just 120,000 we must all know each other!). So, in addition to all the usual questions (what job do you have?, are you married?, how many children do you have?) this time I also got things like “what team do you support in New Zealand’s IPL?”, “who is your favourite player?”, “do you know Chris Cairns?” and so on. My friend Ross Taylor hit a massive six in his brief innings of 15, and I was high-fived by about 20 people close by!

It was a huge, noisy, exuberant, happy crowd in a really amazing atmosphere – an atmosphere incidentally which was impacted before each innings by the ground staff spraying huge quantities of mosquito repellent which drifted all over the crowd (necessary because the game didn’t start until after dark, at 8pm). All in all, an experience not to be missed…..

Oh, one thing that was just like home…there was an intruder on the pitch. Halfway through the first innings, a dog ran onto the field from behind the keeper, circled around the square leg umpire, shot between the stumps and the bowler at the top of his mark, and exited the pitch down by long on. Got a great cheer from the crowd.

And the result? As if you care! After 377 runs were scored in 40 overs with 39 fours and 15 sixes, MY team the Delhi Daredevils scored a very impressive 207/5 (V Sehwag 73, M Jayawardene 55, K Pietersen 50) and beat the Mumbai Indians 170/9 (A Rayudu 62, S Tendulkar 7) by 37 runs. I only mention Sachin Tendulkar’s score because he is very much in the news here, having been offered a seat in the Indian Parliament yesterday – the front page headline in “The Times of India” today was GOD HAS A NEW HOUSE.

Full scoreboard can be found at Cricinfo