Mohali:
Call it sheer bad luck. Forty-one -year old Rajeev Vinayak and his 13-year-old nephew, Jatin couldn't watch the big battle at Mohali despite having valid tickets as they arrived late at stadium thanks to a massive traffic jam due to the VIP movement.
The duo was supposed to come to Mohali from sector 30 in Chandigarh and their tickets were with Vinayak's brother who was already standing in the queue at the stadium.
"We left our house at around 1:30 in the afternoon. We had hardly advanced a kilometer when we found a traffic jam ahead. By the time we realised we should take a different route, it was too late. Meanwhile, my brother started calling, asking us to hurry up as the queue was moving fast," said Rajeev.
Till 2 o'clock, Rajeev couldn't move his car even an inch. He then requested his brother to come out of the queue and wait for them for some more time.
On inquiring from the bystanders, Rajeev found out that the traffic had been halted because some VIP was passing through that route. "As hundreds of vehicles had got stuck in the jam, I realised it would take a lot of time for the jam to clear. I then asked my brother to enter the stadium.
The jam took almost an hour to clear and we managed to reach the stadium only by 3:30pm." By then the entry to the stadium had been closed.
Disappointed, the young Jatin said that they tried to make a last effort to enter. "We told the security personnel at the gate that our tickets were with my father who was inside and one of them could accompany us to the stands so that we could show them our tickets but no one agreed.
If my father had come out of the stadium, he would not have been able to get in again and I didn't want that. So we planned to return home and catch the remaining moments of Indian batting on television," said Jatin.