The Eden Experience!

In August, I came to know that an India-SL ODI match will be played in Eden Gardens, thanks to many venues opting out owing to security reasons. And by round robin allocation of matches, Kolkata got its match after a gap of 2 years. I was elated as a cricket fanatic to view a match in Eden and frankly, coming to Kolkata is not something I envisage in the times to come. When I got through IIM Calcutta, I had this wish to watch a match in the stadium. But the happiness was shortlived as this time, CAB (Cricket Association of Bengal) decided not to do any public sale of tickets and issue only passes for the match. And with this went my all hopes of watching the match.

But a day before the match, a class mate of mine messaged me informing about an extra pass (read FREE) for the day-night encounter. And I jumped on to the opportunity! Finally, I was going to watch the match first time ever in a stadium and that too in Eden :)

We reached the venue well in advance as we were warned about the mad mad crowd which result in a long queue. Here, I must salute the security arrangements made by the city police. The approach road was closed for all vehicles and we had to walk down quite some distance to reach our gate as different blocks had different entrances. We (3 of us) had to wait for classmate to arrive with the passes. In the meantime, we got our faces painted (I did not) and bought Indian flags to cheer the team. Companies were freely distributing the 4 and 6 written placard outside the stadium and hawkers made quick buck by selling food-stuff for 200-250% the price!

After a long wait, we finally made our way to the gate.Here, security frisked us atleast 5 times and did not allow any water bottles (Eden has a bad track record, remember the 1996 World Cup semi-final with the same opponent) and the only flags were allowed as people were told to remove the wooden sticks with them.

We entered and it was not easy to locate our stand as it seems that only our stand did not have any directions. After a lot of hunting, we managed to located our seats. The view from there was just amazing! It was one level up and when we entered, all the players were practicing. The crowd was cheering Indian team like anything. The toss took place at 2:15 which India lost and we had to witness India field first.

The best part about the live match viewing is the environment in the stadium. The crowd is always on its feet, cheering every ball, every run saved, a 50 or century scored (even by opposition) and creating the mexican wave. I personally enjoyed the mexican wave participation to the maximum. It just starts in one stand and keeps moving again and again...after 4-5 rounds it stops and people then clap for themselves for the commendable performance ;)

The other thing which is different is the speed and ease with which players change the field between overs or between deliveries when the batsmen change. The bowler just walks to his run-up and in the meanwhile, the field is so quickly changed. Also, when a batsman hits a ball cleanly for a boundary..the sound of timber sounds like WOW!

When India came out to bat in the lights (which were switched on at 3:30 pm), the stadium was looking just too awesome to be explained in words. The bat carried by the batsmen looked like shining armour waiting to assault the ball. Sadly, Sehwag and Sachin got out early as we wanted to experience some fireworks. More sad was that we had to leave when India were on 150 as we had more important engagements back in college. It would have been just great to be a part of winning celebrations of India in the stadium :) :)

I am surely booking the tickets for the WC 2011 final in Wankhede, Mumbai to relive the experience!