Mumbai: A sea of yellow poured onto the platform at Pune railway station at 11.40am, marking the first time in the history of Indian railways, an entire train had journeyed full of only cricket fans.
Super Kings skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni is a favourite among fans across the country and there were plenty of fans at Friday night’s match after 1,000 fans travelled to Pune in a special train from Chennai. The franchise has set up an initiative to take supporters all the way from Chennai to Pune for the match — a distance of 1,200km — on a specially chartered train called ‘Whistle Podu Express’ that left Chennai Central on Thursday.
Fans were given complimentary tickets for the match against the Rajasthan Royals.
Chennai had to move their match to Pune due to protests over the Cauvery water dispute that marred their victory over Kolkata Knight Riders at M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on April 10.
That did not deter the fans and Krishnath Patil, the senior divisional commercial manager of the railways, was present at the station to welcome the fans.
“This is the first time, full train of 18 coaches ran specially for thousands of cricket fans. We received the CSK fans with great enthusiasm at Pune station,” he said.
“I am a cricket lover and also a fan of Dhoni, not only because he was India captain but I like to see him performing well under pressure also,” he added.
Train driver B Gunashekhar, and guard K C Gaikwad were also delighted to bring Chennai-based fans to Pune. “We were happy and excited to bring the fans to see the match,” said the guard. “We welcome them in this city because the matches of their team have been shifted to this city.”
The driver added: “We are also cricket fans and were invited to watch the match. However because of our duty schedules we are not going for the match.”
Sarvanan, a member of the CSK fan club, added: “We very much enjoyed the journey and arrived here safely. It took about 20 hours to reach here. We started at 8.30pm yesterday from Chennai.”
