Passionate fans flock to hail Rohit and his men

A humongous crowd, braving wet weather and traffic snarls, lines up along Marine Drive to cheer with gusto the special bus carrying the World Cup-winning T20 Indian team

Being patient, be it for delayed or disrupted local train service or due to traffic snarls, is so ingrained in the life of a Mumbaikar that he or she doesn’t mind when it’s often misrepresented or glorified as the ‘Spirit of Mumbai.’

On Thursday, a majority of those who were stuck in terrible traffic jam would not have minded it.

After all, it was for cricket, another passion of a Mumbaikar as Rohit Sharma’s victorious batch of 2024 “brought the metropolis to a standstill” in a style similar to Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s men famously did 17 years ago.

While ‘Dhoni’s Dashers’ 25-km long bus parade in 2007 had attracted lakh of fans, Thursday saw an enormous crowd concentrated in the two-kilometre radius around the Wankhede Stadium.

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The squad’s arrival from New Delhi, after meeting the Prime Minister, was delayed by almost two hours and by the time the team bus got out of the Mumbai airport, the evening traffic had peaked.

It led to a commotion and a corridor being created for the bus.