2023 was a very memorable 12 months for Indian sport. With a lot having occurred, ESPN India picks ten photos that inform the story of essentially the most gorgeous moments we witnessed over the 12 months. Our ninth choose is a second when Bengaluru’s Kanteerava Stadium sang Vande Mataram in unison put up India’s win over Kuwait within the SAFF Championships.

You’ve heard Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Vande Mataram 1,000,000 occasions. You in all probability find it irresistible, and it’s possible you’ll even love AR Rahman’s reimagining of the traditional (with lyrics by Mehboob Kotwal) much more. You’ve positively heard that model sufficient occasions in your lifetime to know simply the way it goes. You’d have by no means, although, heard it sung fairly like this.

26,380 folks (official attendance; may have been a bit extra) packed into the Kanteerava stadium in Bengaluru, orchestrated by nobody particular person, only a large collective voice going “Maa tujhe salaam…“, as they serenaded the nation and her senior males’s soccer crew. Ah.

Cutting throughout membership loyalties and rising above league soccer’s tribal pettiness, followers from throughout got here collectively as a “non-traditional” soccer centre rose to the event whereas India beat Kuwait (on penalties) within the 2023 SAFF Championship ultimate. The spectators had been boisterous all through the sport, chanting the names of the gamers on the sector, screaming the extra generic “Indiaaa! Indiaaaa!” however their rendition of Vande Mataram on the finish was actually particular.

Just take heed to it:

Goosebumps on the Kanteerava ��

��: @AnirudhMenon89 pic.twitter.com/wOuZpM1KKh

– ESPN India (@ESPNIndia) July 4, 2023

This was late, late on a Tuesday night time. To get to the stadium itself had been a ache — Bengaluru police issuing an unprecedented site visitors advisory due to the soccer — however this late on, and getting out can be a ache too with public transport shutting right down to barebones operations. Yet not one soul of the 26,380 appeared to have moved. And each considered one of them appeared to be singing.

The entire summer season had been constructing as much as this second, India’s wins within the Intercontinental Cup were emphatic, and their efficiency within the SAFF Championship was slightly unusually attractive. This was a crew taking part in fairly neat soccer in possession and working their socks off out of it: the type of crew that the general public can get behind.

And get behind they did. That single body of the group singing the trendy model of the nationwide tune encapsulated the positivity across the crew (on the time), and the game’s ever-increasing reputation because the summer season of success fed each the loyalist and the newly transformed with the type of adrenaline rush that everybody craves.

As a feel-good second for Indian sports activities, this was proper up there. In reality, the sound of the Kanteerava that night time so completely captured the overall awesomeness of a peoples-being one-with-sport that advertisers would go on to overlay the sound of this crowd singing over visuals of the crowds on the cricket World Cup held within the nation later that 12 months. Now, is not that one thing?