The inaugural of the Indian Premier League (IPL) Twenty20 tournament got off with a 45-minute glitz and glamour show before the clash between Bangalore Royal Challengers and Kolkata Knight Riders as a near-full M. Chinnaswamy Stadium roared 'Welcome to Bengaluru'.
Soon after, the trio of Shankar-Ehsan-Loy had the almost full 55,000-capacity stadium foot tapping with fast-moving mix of Hindi film and pop music.
Shankar Mahadevan regaled the audience with popular Hindi film song "Jhoom barabar..." and it was followed by lots of fancy fireworks.
The stadium began to fill nearly six hours before the show began at 6.30 p.m. Hundreds of people had begun queueing up around noon to get the vantage seats.
IPL opening match:
McCullum’s record century boosts Kolkata Knight Riders
A brilliant innings from Brendan McCullum who scored 158 runs out of a total of 222 for the Kolkata Knight Riders.
McCullum hit 13 sixes, 10 fours to chalk up his record of the highest total. A tall task ahead for the Royal Challengers.
In reply, the Bangalore Royal Challengers were in trouble losing skipper Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, Jacques Kallis and Wasim Jaffer in quick succession. After 6 overs their score was a meagre 26 for 4.
Meanwhile, the world's leading news agencies boycotted coverage of the mega Indian event.
Update:
Kolkata Knight Riders won the IPL inaugural match against Bangalore Royal Challengers by 140 runs.
The Challengers in reply to Knight Riders' 222 for 3 were all out for 82 runs in 15.1 overs.
For the Challengers led by former India skipper Rahul Dravid, it was an abject surrender of their batting line-up. Bowler Praveen Kumar was the only one who could get into double figures, being unbeaten with 18 runs in 15 balls
