KheloPakistan present their first ever fan following. A young man from Australia went to see the Melbourne Renegades in action last week. Here is what, Eliya Abbas made of the game and experience:
Choice of game
Shahid 'Boom Boom' Afridi and Abdul 'Bang Bang' Razzaq in my town playing for the same team - Do I really need any other reason to go watch this match?
Team supported
The moment I found out that Afridi and Razzaq were going to be playing for Melbourne Renegades (which also happens to be my home team), I was already their fan! My love for these two players also lead me to being one of the first hundred members of the Melbourne Renegades so the team I was supporting was obviously the Melbourne Renegades.
Key performer
Hate to admit this but Shaun Marsh was easily the player of the day. He never really tried any brainless slogging but fluently played his shots with great timing which helped him smash five sixes and nine fours. He didn't seem to be troubled by his back either and looked like a man in top form. I'm sure the Indian cricket team won't be taking him lightly this summer.
One thing I'd have changed
Plenty of things that I would have liked to change such as not dropping the catches of Marsh and Gibbs, playing Nannes and of course winning the match but one thing that I desperately wanted to see was Afridi's batting but his turn never came. I would have certainly liked to see Afridi promoted up the order to No.4 instead of Nathan Reardon!
Wow moment
Glenn Maxwell's hat-rick of sixes was something to behold - especially the third HUGE six! Poor Marcus North never got an opportunity to bowl another over after being hammered for 22 runs in his first over.
Close encounter
Abdul Razzaq was fielding on the boundary right in front of where I was sitting so we kept cheering for him by shouting "Fauji, Fauji!" He even waved back at us once :D
Shot of the day
I think it's got to be Maxwell's third six over the square leg. I think it covered a 90+ meter distance!
Crowd meter
The crowd wasn't large - about 13,500 people - but they were really noisy which created a great atmosphere. I was sitting amongst quite a few Pakistanis so we were going delirious whenever Afridi or Razzaq came up on the big screen!
Most of the fans were in red cheering for the Renegades in unison. In fact, we even got the Aussies to start shouting "Renegades Zindabad, Pakistan Zindabad!" The fans also participated in the Mexican wave enthusiastically though the passion began dying towards the end as defeat started seeming inevitable for the Renegades.
The loudest cheer was heard when Razzaq smashed Edmondson for a huge six in the 18th over closely followed by the cheer that Maxwell received after smashing three sixes in a row. There were loads of Afridi fanatics in the ground too though he never got to bat neither did he do as well as the expectations of the people with the ball 
Fancy-dress index
To promote the Melbourne Renegades, the promoters also handed out an iPad 2 as a gift to the best-dressed spectator (Kristie) in the ground who was dressed from bottom to top in Red!
Marks out of 10
6.5 Lots of boundaries were hit in the tiny ground so there was some fireworks from the batsmen though the team I supported - Renegades - ended up being on the losing side which left me disheartened. Also the fact that Shahid Afridi didn't get to bat was quite disappointing!
GeoSuper