Cricket, however, was not on Kolkata’s priority list on Sunday. Day One saw a sparse crowd — at least by Eden Gardens’ standards.

The city is hosting a Test match after more than two years and it happened to be on a holiday but the crowd turnout was disappointing even as the capacity of Eden Gardens, with two blocks demolished for renovation, has been reduced to 44,800.

The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) joint-secretary, Biswarup Dey, blamed it on the declining popularity of the longer version of the game.

“I will not declare it as a flop show. More than 25,000 people came. But it’s a fact that Test cricket doesn’t attract crowds like before. Today’s youngsters are more interested in the Twenty20 slam-bang,” Dey said.

The season tickets for this match are priced at Rs 750 and Rs 1,500, which is not too high, according to Dey, to keep the public away.

“The lowest price for an IPL ticket is Rs 400 and it’s just three hours of entertainment. Here, the tickets are sold at Rs 150 and Rs 300 for a day’s play. So, I don’t think the price of tickets is an issue,” he said.

On allowing school kids free to the ground, Dey said: “Changing priced tickets into free passes needs approval from the state authorities and it’s too late to do that.”

“The Vidarbha Cricket Association did it at Nagpur as less than 1,000 people attended the first two days of the first Test match. We already have a turnout which is not very disappointing and an increase or decease by another 1,000 or so really doesn’t matter,” Dey added.

Rumours also did the rounds that people stayed away in the wake of the Pune blast.