Half a story

The guy to my front was a journo too. A greenhorn from a local paper. He wore a grim look. The cops had just stripped him off his invaluable possession of packs of smoke. He brightened up as I got the security’s thumbs-up and sheepishly walked past the checkpost and into the Eden Gardens.

You must have guessed it by now. It’s Thursday afternoon. I am at the hallowed cricket stadium to cover the one-day match between India and Sri Lanka. An international one-day match at Eden,after three long years. And it’s the same old story again. Battling against security guards,dodging nosey policemen,negotiating delirious crowds and fanatics,to snake my way through to the ground. By the time I get to the press box,perched strikingly way above Eden’s galleries,it’s like a series of battles won. On second thoughts,it’s not an unwelcome ritual. After that traumatic experience,covering the cricket match from the cozy media centre is a piece of cake.

It’s been 20 years now that Eden Gardens,dubbed as the Mecca of world cricket alongside the Lord’s,has been hosting matches under floodlights. And last week’s day-night game was just another brick on the wall.

But only for those catching the action on telly. For those at Ground Zero,this was a never-before sight. You’ve known Eden Gardens for its one lakh spectators screaming the hell out of you. Visiting teams,from Englishmen to Australians to the West Indians,have found this one venue notorious — this is where Kolkata’s killer,partisan crowd has a track record of ratcheting up a din that’s knocked the living daylights out of the toughest of India’s opponents time and again.

For a stadium with such notoriety — Eden is often compared to a gladiatorial setting for its unforgiving six-figure crowd — this time round it was a massive shock. A dampener in fact.

Half the stands were missing. They were just not there. Gone was Eden’s famous one-lakh capacity. Gone was the only feature,a phenomenon rather,that made Eden special in world cricket.

Cricket fans had read and heard about the demolition work in progress at the decades-old stadium for a few months now. It’s undergoing complete revamp. All the outdated concrete stands that for decades stood tall,overlooking the lush green bowl,are in the process of being pulled down. On the match day,half of Eden’s stands were intact. But half of Eden’s rim stood out like a ghost — the towering stands had been razed and the area cleared.

When the crowds found their way to Eden on Thursday afternoon,their hearts skipped a beat (so did mine when I got to know of the revamp long back). They knew straightaway that something was missing. This wasn’t the Eden they had seen and adored and revered. Half of Eden was missing. That the other half was there made for an even more unrealistic,almost comical sight,particularly from the press box from where we get an overview of the entire stadium.

One half of Eden was crammed with 50,000 spectators,screaming their lungs out. It’s picture-perfect Eden. And one half was a deserted band,peppered with rubble here and there. Like a scene straight from a war-torn Afghan town.

I am sure the cricketers themselves must have been foxed by the sight of half of Eden’s humongous stands missing. Zaheer Khan must have felt the uneasy calm,the eerie disquiet behind him when he was running in to bowl from the Club House End. Jayasuriya must have rubbed his eyes while eyeing the boundary line — staring into emptiness — before going for shots.

For the crowds,the shocker,that undefinable feeling that something-is-missing-but-you-don’t-know-what-it-is,came that fateful afternoon. It needed an international match to drag them all the way down to the ground for them to feel the blow.

For me,it came long back,and slowly. Ever since the authorities decided that Eden’s backdated stands were backdated enough to be torn down and replaced by modern,spectator-friendly seating arrangements.

For over a couple of months,Eden was a sight straight from HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. A constant yellow haze hovering overhead,overshadowing the ground. Bulldozers,dozens of them. Eating into the stands,ripping them apart,like the tripods did in the HG Wells sci-fi thriller. There were cranes,their extensions panning across the Eden skyline. Dropping this,picking up that. And a constant din,a buzz. Of machines,pumps,generators,cylinders working away day in and day out — for weeks and months,the sight has been so Un-Eden.

Thursday exposed the new Eden,the half Eden,to our full glare. The cricket that evening was eventful,both on and off the field. I had my hands full in the press box. India played rollicking cricket. There were plenty of runs,the crowds lapped it up. The floodlights went off for half an hour and sent the organizers running around like headless chickens. There was tremendous fog. It was almost like a thick,fluorescent cloud descending on the ground,lit up nicely in the dead of the night. And there was a fantastic chase to top it all.

But all this and much more wasn’t enough to shake the cricket fans off what shook them when they got their first view of the new Eden,and instantly missed the Eden they knew.