Batsman hits the sponsored car parked at IPL games
If you are an avid watcher of the IPL like I am, you’ll be used to the fact that inside the ground, on the boundary edge there is usually a car parked as part of a sponsorship deal between the manufacturer and the BCCI. Commentators are obviously under strict instructions to ensure that they get as many mentions as possible for the vehicle while on air and some of the segues between cricket and car are truly awful.
Personally, the only thing I can think of when watching that is remotely related to the car is whether a batsmen has ever hit it?
For those of us that play club cricket, seeing a car hit by a cricket ball is not an uncommon experience largely because the average club ground doesn’t have much in the way of protection between playing surface and car park. My dad had a lovely red cherry on the side of his Audi 100 back in the day where a stray cricket ball had hit it. Still, you’d have to be pretty idiotic to park your car on boundary edge in the way that you see in the IPL so I figured that there must have been a few incidents where it took a bit of a battering from some of the biggest six hitters in world cricket.
Having searched the internet, the best I can come up with is yes, the sponsored car parked on the boundary edge at IPL matches has been hit at least twice!
The first time was by big hitting Aussie batsman Chris Lynn in a game vs Rajasthan Royals. To be quite frank, if you’re going to leave a car parked at cow corner while Lynn is on strike then you deserve a ball through your windscreen. However, despite Lynn’s six making direct contact with the glass, it didn’t break and instead it just set the alarm off.
Watch Chris Lynn hit the car here
The second time came during IPL 2020 when Jason Holder’s six hit the car in a game vs RCB. Holder only gets a partial credit though as he didn’t, as far as I can tell, get a direct hit like Lynn with the ball going over the car, hitting the advertising hoarding behind it and them bouncing back to hit the door.
Watch Jason Holder hit the car here
Both instances provided the commentators the perfect opportunity to wax lyrical about the vehicle’s fine construction, safety features and zzzzzzzz. Sorry I thought this was a cricket match not Top Gear!
It did however get me wondering as to whether the windscreens they install on the cars at the cricket are what you’d get if your bought one from a showroom. I mean it’s certainly not a great look from an advertising perspective to have a vehicle on display that has been smashed in by a cricket ball and perhaps in the knowledge that it was only a matter of time before a batsmen in the IPL hit the car that the manufacturers took action to reinforce at the very least the windscreen! Is bullet proof glass a standard feature of these cars because you feel that is what would be needed to survive a direct hit from a cricket ball like we see above!
Have you seen anymore examples of players hitting the sponsored car? Let me know in the comments so that I can add them to the list.