Cricket to Indians is like hockey to Canadian. The Australian team is playing the Indian team in Bangalore this week. A cricket match last 4-5 days, and 8 hours per day. The game will start in the morning, then players will have a lunch break, and the game continue until the evening. Since it would be fun to watch a live cricket game, we decided to try out luck at the stadium after lunch yesterday.

When we arrived at the stadium, the ticket is already sold out. We were a bit disappointed, so the driver offered to help us get some tickets from the scalper. He left the car disappeared into the crowd for a few minutes, then come back with the scalper with him. The scalper is selling us three tickets for 3000 Rupee. We thought its a bit too expensive, so he lower it down to 2000 Rupee. We still think it’s too much and we counter offer him 1500 Rupee. Which is what we original budget for the game. CAD$10 for a few hours of game. Not bad. So we got our tickets, sent our driver away and ready to have some fun.

When we arrive at the gate, we found out the tickets turn out to be used. It’s OK, because the ticket come with the return pass allowing ticket holder go out and get back into the stadium. However we only got two return pass, one return pass is missing. We played dumb with the door man, pulled our innocent tourist card and eventually he let us go inside. When we arrive at the seats, it turns out 2 tickets belong to one section and another ticket belong to another section. Again, we play dumb and pulled our innocent tourist card, all three of us get into the seats. The seats are very good, we were sitting on the 3rd row right behind the camera men. We watched the game until the end of the day, get almost 2 hours of good cricket action. The pace of the game is quite slow, probably it is as exciting as base ball. It really test my patient spending two hours watching the Indian team getting 100 points, trying to catch up with the 450 points Australian team got in the 1st inning.

At the end of the day, every one is happy. The scalper is happy for turning an handsome profit on some garbage paper. The driver is happy for getting a cut from the scalper. We are happy for watching an international cricket game at prime location seats. We get to experienced two India trademark experience first handed in a single cricket game. We got ripped off big time by the scalper and we got bored by watching the endless bowl and bat in a cricket game. One stone shooting down two birds.