A sparkling closing ceremony, splashed with glitz and glamour preceded the IPL summit clash between Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings in Mumbai on Sunday night.
The 40-minute long ceremony at the DY Patil Stadium was choreographed by the Oscar-winning composer AR Rehman.
Though embattled IPL chairman and commissioner Lalit Modi was present at the venue, he did not address the capacity crowd -- about 55,000 -- and the ceremony was purely a dance and music show.
Rehman enthralled the packed gathering by belting out his mega-hit songs -- Chale Chalo from the movie 'Lagaan', 'Vande Maataram' and ended with Oscar-winning 'Jai Ho' from Slumdog Millionaire.
There were other brief dance numbers performed by Bollywood stars Bipasha Basu and Shahid Kapoor.
Bollywood diva Bipasha danced on the title track of her movie 'Race' as she set the pulse racing for the spectators while Shahid Kapoor did his bit, shaking his legs to a song from his movie on the makeshift stage erected on the ground.
Before the ceremony, Modi spoke to the official broadcasters about the success of the Twenty20 league.
"You could not have asked for better. What a tournament .. lots of excitement. Mumbai Indians won most of their matches but nobody knew which three teams would go to the semifinals till the last game. Thank you cricket fans of the country and abroad, you have made all these possible," he said.
Modi tried to show that he was not perturbed by his confrontation with the BCCI top brass and even spoke about the brand new auction for the next season.
"We will have 94 games (next year). More games and more competition, it will be a bit longer ... a week longer. There will be two new teams and a brand new auction next year, it will be a beginning from the scratch," he said.
Meanwhile, top BCCI functionaries, including president Shashank Manohar and secretary N Srinivasan skipped the Indian Premier League's summit clash at the DY Patil Stadium on Sunday night.
After being closeted in the Board's Headquarters at the Wankhede Stadium premises for close to eight hours ahead of tomorrow's IPL Governing Council meeting at the same venue, Manohar and Srinivasan departed along with IPL vice-chairman Niranjan Shah.
The trio had skipped the semifinals of the IPL too held on April 21 and 22.
All three are expected to grill Modi at Monday's meet which is anticipated to be a heated one in the aftermath of the alleged financial irregularities committed in the running of the hugely popular Twenty20 event by Modi.
Incidentally Srinivasan is also the MD and vice-chairman of India Cements that owns one of the finalists - Chennai Super Kings - who clashed for the title with Mumbai Indians.
Two other Council members Chirayu Amin and Arun Jaitley also attended the meeting at the Board's office.
Two other Council members Inderjit Singh Bindra, a Modi backer and former BCCI chief who is now in an advisor to the International Cricket Council, and the BCCI's Finance and Media Committee head Rajiv Shukla, who was earlier at the Board office, were seen later watching the match. PTI
