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Eden Gardens… one of the largest cricketing stadium in the world. One of the most beautiful too. It is often compared with MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) situated in Australia.
An Account Of A 1996 World Cup Semi-final Match:-
People in the cricketing world knows the name or the ground very well. For the wrong reasons though. In 1996 cricket world cup, which was held in Indian subcontinent, India and Sri Lanka had played a semi-final match here.
So whats the big deal here?
Only that the match had to be stopped due to public anger spilling over to the ground! Spectators threw bottles at the Sri Lankan players because India lost wickets in quick sessions.
Even Sri Lanka had lost wickets in that way. The problem was with the pitch. Here a world cup semi final match was being played in a such a unplayable wicket. It had no pace, no bounce. It was dusty and big cracks could be seen everywhere! The curator was Kalyan Mitra.
Come Back to 2008:-
A IPL match was being played. We need to remember that its a Twenty20 match. So a bowler only has the job to deliver the ball and see it go to the boundary!
But how can the the batsmen do that? Coz the wicket is the same type on which that semi final was played! Yes! Coz the curator was the same!!
When the whole world was watching the match with intense curiosity the wicket played the havoc. BCCI or Board of Control for Cricket in India did not take any action against the curator at that time. And he(the curator) wanted to be in the limelight again.
CAB:-
CAB stands for Cricket Association Of Bengal. The agency or the club entrusted with the maintenance of the ground. Though the regime has changed, the facility on the ground, spectators` amenities and other facilities haven`t changed at all over the years. With the kind of money they(BCCI and CAB) possess they can easily provide world class amenities for the spectators. But why to do it when they are not accountable to anyone.
They did not even provide the basic facilities required for a match to go on smoothly!
Let me elaborate on these…
Water - There was no water supply in toilets across many blocks of the stadium.
The reason given behind this was that the pipes are old and need to be replaced as there are many leaks.
Pitch - The infamous curator about whom I have already written above had produced another very dry and cracked wicket. He didnt water the pitch for many days despite repeated requests from the ground staffs. The staffs didnt even drew their salaries for the month of March in protest against this.
Reason unknown.
Scoreboard - There is a huge electronic scoreboard present on the ground. There are also two manual scoreboards. None of those boards were maintained during the match. Just imagine the situation where around 80000 spectators did not know the score of the batsmen, information about bowlers, overs remaining, run rate etc.
Reason told was that the manual scoreboard were not supposed to be used. And the person in charge of maintaining the electronic scoreboard was not informed!
Lights - This was the most embarrassing sirtuation of all. out of four floodlight towers, lights on two floodlight towers had gone off suddenly. The entire field was doomed into darkness for about 30 min. The game was subsequently halted.
Reason given was that the electricity infrastructure needs to be changed, dedicated feeder line needs to be provided.
Now who is responsible for all these defects? If thieves enter your whose and rob, then who will be responsible for that? Definitely its U, for not securing your house adequately, right? in the same way dont the CAB needs to pull its shocks and get their act together?
Lets keep our fingers crossed and see what happens in the future series…
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