India at home in Durban

In what seemed like a uniform sea of Indian supporters, Brian and his family were a brave lot. Wearing a Qantas T-shirt and carrying a huge Australian flag, there was no question about which team they were here to support. Was it daunting to be holding an Aussie flag when it was obvious they were so heavily outnumbered?

“It doesn’t really matter to us,” says Brian. “We [the Aussie supporters] might be just 1% of the total crowd today, but we’ll be the 1% who will be happy after the match.” Brian is from Durban, but has family in Australia, which is why he supports Australia whenever his home team isn’t playing.

Brian isn’t bothered by the fact Australia aren’t a popular team in this country. “People reckon they are arrogant, but the way they play, they have every right to be. This Indian team is pretty arrogant too,” he counters.

He is worried, though, about the prospect of Yuvraj Singh returning for the game. “Is he playing here?” Brian asks. When I tell him he probably is, Brian raises an eyebrow that seems to suggest ‘That could spell bad news for the Australians’. As it turns out, he was right in being worried about Yuvraj, and wrong about the 1% bit. unless, of course, he was so taken in by India’s performance that he switched allegiance during the game.

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“We might have sold about a couple of Australian flags, and about 30 Indian ones,” reckons Naidoo, who works at Sports Shoppe, the small shop that sells souvenirs. The figures are equally skewed in another stall as well – ‘seven or eight Aussie flags, about 40 Indian ones’. As the Indians start pounding the boundaries, all those flags are put to good use; there are so many of them, India might well have been playing at home.