Mumbai, July 5 (IANS): After lakhs of cricket fans gave a rousing welcome to their beloved World Cup-winning Team India, thousands who trudged back home late on Thursday night had to return barefoot.

The wild and frenzied jamborees were witnessed, starting from Nariman Point, on the Marine Drive, the Wankhede Stadium at Churchgate of the victory parade, and many other locations from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport to south Mumbai.

After greeting Team India, clicking photos and selfies, thousands who were present at Marine Drive for the open bus victory parade prepared to go back home but discovered that they had lost their footwear in the melee.

Dead exhausted after the screaming, shouting and merrymaking in the darkness with bouts of rain, the crowds were raring to reach their homes, some even as far as the distant suburbs of Mumbai and beyond in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), so they didn’t bother to retrieve them.

As the crowds cleared by midnight, an army of over 100 conservancy staffers of the BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) trooped out for a special clean-up operation that lasted till dawn on Marine Drive, almost five kms long from Nariman Point till Chowpatty that was chock-a-block.

Not surprisingly, the BMC teams collected loads of extra garbage, filling up two huge dumpers – and another five jeeps with thousands of singles/pairs of different varieties of footwear that were lost last night!

This ‘unique collection’ comprised of slippers, sandals, shoes, sneakers, canvas shoes, moccasins, loafers, et al.

A compactor and dumper along with the 100 staffers of Solid Waste Management Department, picked up all the garbage, helped by many NGO volunteers chipping in the efforts to unveil a spic-and-span Marine Drive on Friday morning.

A neat Marine Drive greeted the usual crowds of morning walkers, joggers and strollers and the outcome impressed even industrialist Anand Mahindra, who tweeted his appreciation.

Besides the footwear, the cleaners collected a large number of food-wraps, water bottles, bags and other personal articles that may have been forgotten or lost in the massive sea of humanity.

From the waste scooped up the BMC decided to send the five jeeploads of footwear directly for reprocessing, though officials could not immediately confirm if they had collected similar stuff from the vicinity of the stadium or the route from CSMIA to Nariman Point.