For half an hour the Eden Gardens remained dark forcing the match between Kolkata’s Knight Riders and Hyderabad’s Deccan Chargers to come to a halt—a first in the history of the stadium since it donned the four floodlight towers.
The power disruption first hit the two floodlight towers at the Club House end of the stadium followed by the other two towers at the High Court end.
The CESC was first to wash off its hands from the fiasco. It quickly
issued a statement saying: “It is not the fault of the CESC but the power cut was a result of an internal glitch.”
The officials of the Eden Gardens later admitted that a short circuit in the underground wiring of the floodlights had led to the disruption of the power and subsequently the match.
But what made others wonder was a unique coincidence with the Dalhousie area — a commercial hub of the city located in the vicinity of the Eden — plunging into darkness that lasted for more than six hours. The CESC officials attributed this to last night’s fire at the power grid near Prinsep Ghat.
Meanwhile, the cheerleaders who danced to the tune of Bollywood hit numbers— Dard-e-Disco and Mauja Hi Mauja— kept the 80,000 strong-crowd at the Edens busy. With Shah Rukh Khan accompanied by his filmi entourage in the stands, the audience seemed unlikely to get bored. And of course there was the high profile Gandhi family— Rahul Gandhi, sister Priyanka and her husband Robert Vadra.
The Eden’s most high profile guests in recent years were clad in black colours screaming out their
allegiance towards Shah Rukh’s team. But they too were pondering over what was going on out there as darkness slowly enveloped the stadium. When lights returned and the match resumed, King Khan’s Knight Riders had the last laugh by clinching the nail-biting match.