Sunday 02 February

Mumbai

Our second day in Mumbai – and the city has really delivered! We both went out running at 07:30 – after 2.5 miles, Matthew headed back into the hotel, I wanted to push up my miles from my last run if I could, so I aimed for 8 miles … and pleased that I managed 9, although my foot was really sore towards the end. While I was running I noticed a man with Quayside written on his shirt – I caught him up and asked him which quayside his shirt referred to – he said “There is only one!” Ha, ha – he was from Newcastle – my home town! He lives in Gosforth, went to Leeds University, his son lives in Tynemouth. Small world. I asked him what he was doing running about in Mumbai … he was with the English cricket squad – for the fifth and final Twenty20 international match England v India this evening. Also, the whole squad is staying in the same hotel as we are! Extraordinary!

When I got back to hotel I joined Matthew for breakfast and told him about my meeting. A few minutes later he said “There are tickets available. Shall we go?” Of course!! (Apologies, Vaishakh – not a test match, but that wasn’t available today!).

At 12:00 we met with Amrutha at Mumbai railway station. Amrutha is a friend of Bharath and Shubhi and is a museologist and academic curator particularly interested in documents. She also loves cats.

Amrutha has a deep knowledge and wonderful way of explaining the development and architecture in Mumbai. We walked around the old fort area and drank a lot of juice to keep cool! We spent quite a while in a lovely bookshop, too and the David Sassoon library.

We have some very long train journeys ahead, so we went to a little supermarket (part of Tesco!) and a whole food store for provisions.

When we arrived back in the hotel, we were a little surprised to see a cordon running from the entrance to the lifts – lots of people waiting with their phone cameras primed and security staff keeping everyone back. The England cricket team were about to walk out to the bus that was waiting outside to take them to tonight’s game. That was fun – a really nice atmosphere and a fairly pessimistic view among the assembled crowd of England’s prospects this evening.

Our match tickets had been couriered to the hotel – Matthew was sent backwards and forwards between different places to get them and rather typically they turned out to have been at the first place he’d gone to all along!

We walked to the Wankhede Stadium – the crowds were getting bigger and bigger and excitement was building. We could see the enormous floodlights lighting up the sky. We had some trouble getting in – some of the people in the hotel lobby who were going to the game told us that we wouldn’t be allowed in with any bags. So I left my bag at the hotel, taking only my wallet, small binoculars, my phone and the powerbank charger. I hadn’t spotted that Matthew had a small bag with him with his wallet, our passports, a small tube of sunscreen and a packet of wet-wipes (he rarely goes anywhere without them!). At the gates there were security searchers and I wasn’t allowed my binoculars or phone charger. The sunscreen and Matthew’s bag were also forbidden. Sigh. Arguing that I’d had my binoculars in UK cricket matches wasn’t impressing anyone. My ankle was pretty sore by now after a long day on my feet, so Matthew decided to run back and leave the banned items at our hotel then come back while I went in. Our hotel wasn’t too far, so he was back before the start of play.

The atmosphere in the stadium was brilliant – exciting. India have already won the five match series 3-1 … it would be nice if England could avoid a 4-1 defeat. There was some amazing cricket on display … unfortunately not much of that from the England side! England won the toss and chose to bowl first, India’s young batting superstar Abhishek Sharma played brilliantly, scoring 135 off 54 balls that included 13 sixes – the most by an India batter in T20s (no one else came anywhere close to Sharma’s score). It was both beautiful and painful to watch as an Englishman – and there was some fun, friendly banter from the Indian supporters around us as we celebrated the Indian fall of wickets then watched ours fall so quickly in dismay!

The scorecard is here and the match report is here (if you can bear it!).

The final indignity was our taxi to the Mumbai Central station. We came out of the stadium and started walking hurriedly back to our hotel to collect our bags – we were conscious that we we didn’t have a lot of time to get our 11:10 evening departures so we hailed a taxi. We said that we wanted to go to our hotel – it was about 1km to the hotel and then 6.5 km to the station – about 4½ miles altogether. The taxi driver said that it would cost ₹2,000 – that’s £20! I baulked and said “Whaaat? You’re joking right?” I said that we shouldn’t go – we could keep walking to the hotel (it wasn’t far, we could see it) and pick up a taxi to the station from there. Matthew was already putting our bags in the back of the taxi and the road was crowded with people coming out of the stadium – I think Matthew was worried that we might not get another taxi and that missing the train would be disastrous. I got in, but I was fuming. The taxi driver drove like a maniac through the heavy traffic, too, which didn’t help. When we arrived at Mumbai central Matthew dived out of the taxi leaving me to pay – the driver then even asked for another ₹500! I said absolutely not and climbed out!

We walked into the station both a little stressed and tense. I said I wish you’d listened to me back then. ‘Let’s not have a row about it’ was the reply. 

Mumbai Central was lovely – airy with big departure boards. On the train, there were people in our cabin who insisted that they were in the right room – we went to find inspector who looked up our reservation and told us we were in a different cabin to the one printed on our ticket – go figure! The train is newer and really nice. We also get breakfast and lunch tomorrow!