The Bollywood 11 beat the Yorkshire 11 at the IIFA foundation celebrity cricket match. The match was held at Headingley Carnegie Stadium in Leeds in front of an excited and huge crowd of filmi fans and stars as part of the IIFA Film weekend.
The star filled Bollywood team consisted of Captain Saif Ali Khan, Arjun Rampal, Dino Moreo, Fardeen Khan, Aftab Shivadasani, Ritesh Deshmukh, Sohail Khan, Arshad Warsi, Boman Irani, Upen Patel, Arbaaz Khan, Vishal Bhardwaj, Kapal Dev, Mohammed Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja.
The Yorkshire team was made up of Nick Knowles, Rosalie Birch, Gladstone Small, Devon Malcolm, Jay Sean, Sherwin Campbell, Chris Lewis, Danny McGuire, Harry Gration, Greg Wise, Manish Bhasin, Ajmal Shahzad, Andew Gale, Colin Salmon, Oliver Milburn and MPs Keith Vaz and Shahid Malik.
Dickie Bird and Jack Hampshire shared umpire duty and Chunky Pandey gave the commentary to the action packed Bollywood style match. Amitabh Bachchan who is the brand ambassador for IIFA inaugurated the match. Shilpa Shetty joined him in opening the event and Salman Khan did the toss up which went to Yorkshire. Batting first, the Yorkshire 11 had scored 142 in 20 overs. But the final outcome was that Bolly 11 won by 143 in 7 overs after former Indian captain Kapil Dev hit a boundary off the last ball to score the winning runs.
The lively crowd danced in the stadium and did Mexican waves to Indian and British Asian music and was entertained by a local Asian dance troupe dancing to ‘Sabse aage honge Hindustani (Indians will lead them all)’. The stadium was filled cheers and sounds of drums, whistles and trumpets. It so was awash with colors of flags with the Indian and Pakistani flags mixed together as everyone was enjoying the activities on and off the pitch. There was also a plane with the message words ‘Happy Birthday Shilpa Shetty’.
During halftime the entertainment continued with a performance by Hard Kaur; who is the only Asian female rapper who sang ‘Ek Glassi’ and then followed up by Rouge who sang their hit ‘Touch my body’.
Abhishek and Aishwarya Bachchan attended the match along with many other stars including Govinda, Kabir Bedi, Randhir Kapoor, Rakesh Roshan, and director J.P. Dutta.
The match seemed to be a poignant moment for Kapil Dev, Azharuddin and Jadeja. When Azharuddin joined by Jadeja at the crease many were reminded of the fact that both he and Jadeja were both amazing cricket players (Azaharuddin still had his easy and languid wristy strokes) had been part of the match-fixing scandal that was the talk of Indian cricket in the past.
During the match Arjun Rampal, Ritesh Deshmukh, Saif Ali Khan and Apirva Lakha surprised everyone with how good they were. In the end Dino Moreo won the best fielder trophy, while the best bowler went to the only female in the game Yorkshire’s Rosalie Birch, and Oliver Milburn was named best batman.
Proceeds of the match are to be donated to the IIFA Foundation.
Congratulations to the Bollywood team!
