BY JULIANNA CUMMINS, EDMONTON JOURNAL APRIL 3, 2011 2:13 AM
\n\u00a0Tears flowed in the University of Alberta’s Students’ Union Building after India won its first cricket world cup title in almost 30 years. The excitement in the SUB started by 2 a.m. Saturday, about an hour before the final match of the Cricket World Cup started, said Debjyoti Sen, a student from India and spokesman for the Indian Student Association at the U of A.
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\nThe association set up a screen and a projector in the SUB building to watch the game, said Sen. More than 100 students turned up to watch the game.<\/p>\n
The crowd of students were nervous at the start of the eight-hour match, said Sen. Once India was declared the winner, people exchanged hugs and waved the Indian flag, with some women in the crowd crying.<\/p>\n
Sen spoke with his parents after the match, who said the entire country is in festival mode with loud firecrackers popping in the hours after the match.<\/p>\n
“I wish I could have been in India,” said Sen. He said the last time India won the Cricket World Cup championship was in 1983.<\/p>\n
In celebration of India’s victory, Rajvi Bhasin was serving free mango lassi drink at his downtown restaurant, Khazana.<\/p>\n
He watched the early morning game at home with friends, although he said he would have hosted an outdoor viewing at his restaurant if the weather was warmer.<\/p>\n
Bhasin said he was in touch with family and friends in India throughout the game, adding that he received at least 200 texts throughout the night.<\/p>\n
“I was up all night,” said Bhasin. “I watched ball to ball.” The day of the match was declared a public holiday in Mumbai, Bhasin said.<\/p>\n
To watch the game in Canada, however, he had to put up $200 for a pay-per-view package of the 40day tournament.<\/p>\n
“He made a point of watching every game India played.<\/p>\n
“It was worth a thousand bucks,” Bhasin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BY JULIANNA CUMMINS, EDMONTON JOURNAL APRIL 3, 2011 2:13 AM \u00a0Tears flowed in the University of Alberta’s Students’ Union Building after India won its first cricket world cup title in almost 30 years. The excitement in the SUB started by 2 a.m. Saturday, about an hour before the final match of the Cricket World Cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1452,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1451\/revisions\/1452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}