NEW DELHI: The T20 World Cup victory parade of Rohit Sharma and co. concluded in Mumbai on Thursday. The parade, which kicked off from Marine Drive, ended at the Wankhede Stadium.Rohit Sharma thanked Mumbai for the turnout, “The huge turnout of fans to welcome the Indian cricket team shows they were as desperate for this T20 World Cup title as the players,” he said.Outgoing coach Rahul Dravid expressed his gratitude, stating, “I am going to miss this love. What I saw on the streets tonight, I won’t forget it.”Virat Kohli reflected on the emotional impact of the victory, saying, “I couldn’t connect with the emotions of seniors who cried after the 2011 World Cup triumph, but now I do.” He also observed, “This is the first time in 15 years that I have seen Rohit show so much emotion.”India pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah expressed, “What I saw today, I have never seen anything like this before,” following the parade.BCCI office-bearers presented Team India with a cheque of Rs 125 crores. The BCCI had announced the prize money for the team after the T20 World Cup.An open-top bus carrying the champions paraded through a huge crowd cheering the country’s champions who brought home a crucial trophy after a wait of 13 years. The fans followed the bus, and soon a sea of people was visible outside the Wankhede Stadium. Both Rohit and Kohli lifted the World Cup together on the bus as fans applauded them. The mood in the Indian camp was euphoric as they soaked in the celebrations from the fans.It is a special moment for the 37-year-old Rohit, who is a Mumbaikar and a huge fan favourite in the city. In 2007, Rohit Sharma was the youngest member of the Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s epoch-making squad and now at 37, for him to lead his T20 World Champion Indian cricket team on a victory parade must have given him a sense of deja vu.He is now the oldest member of this current team, ‘been there and done that’ and even as the faces around him changed in more than one-and-a-half decades, the now-retired Indian T20 skipper remained a constant for all these years.As the bus passed through the sea of human, his mind must have travelled back to that September morning in 2007 when Mumbai was as drenched as it was on Thursday evening.Chants of “Mumbaicha Raja Kaun? Rohit Sharma” (Who’s the King of Mumbai? Rohit Sharma) reverberated through the roads.Dravid was also seen applauding the fans, while many players had covered themselves with the national flag and were enjoying the scenes. Plenty of security personnel were present with the bus for safety reasons.The Wankhede Stadium was thrown open to fans, who filled the stands within minutes to celebrate the Indian cricket team’s title triumph last Saturday.
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