Watching IPL at the Eden Gardens

(This is going to be a long and winding post. You do not have the patience for it. Also, it features cricket. Get lost, now.)

Watching a cricket match at the Eden Gardens is an experience very few forget. On match days, people come in thousands, from far flung places, with wives and kids in tow, as a complete picnic. I am talking TEST matches. All five days. The cricket craziness of these parts is of course legendary, but more importantly what I want to stress is people come to watch cricket at Eden for supporting a team. Cricket most times is secondary. The Pakistan cricket team would never get a standing ovation here .

Add Shah Rukh Khan and Sourav Ganguly and the IPL to that fervour and you have a boiling sweaty cauldron of screaming hysterical fans. One lakh fans. At one place. All baying for blood.

I went to see the match yesterday after a long and tiring day spent in meetings. It is one thing to read about and notice in the background how much of a force SRK is in Calcutta after buying over the Kolkata Knightriders. It is a completely different thing to see and feel it around you.

It is necessary to underline just how celeb crazy (and starved) the Calcutta junta is. Every single bollywood celebrity stopover at Calcutta, even on normal days, for even something as mundane (to the bombay or delhi junta) as fashion shows, or product promotion parties feature on Page 1, with smiling picture and a customary question of when the said celebrity is doing a Tollywood film.

9 pictures of SRK in his various moods were front page cover of The Telegraph (THE leading english daily in bengal) for the previous IPL match at the Eden a couple of days ago. Let me repeat that. Nine.Pictures of Shah Rukh Khan. Front page headline. Various moods during the match. #JustSaying

Cut to yesterday evening. At the Eden Gardens with office colleagues. Everyone and their dog supporting KKR, I had a sudden inspiration to support Chennai Super Kings. And tell people around before the match. Enough times. Also communicate why I think Kolkata Knight Riders do not stand a chance. And that CSK is going to win. For sure.

This is what happened in the match, according to the crisp summing up on cricinfo,

Dhoni masterminds facile win for Chennai

The Bulletin by Sriram Veera

March 16, 2010

Chennai Super Kings 164 for 3 (Dhoni 66*, Badrinath 43*) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 109 (Kemp 3-12) by 55 runs

MS Dhoni and S Badrinath added an unbroken 109-run stand from 65 deliveries to push Chennai Super Kings to a competitive total before their bowlers turned in an inspired performance to bowl them to a surprisingly facile win at the Eden Gardens. It was Chennai who had ended Kolkata's winning streak after the first two games in 2008 and history played out yet again.

Chennai were wobbling at 55 for 3 in the 10th over when Dhoni joined Badrinath to slowly change things around on a track with slightly variable bounce. It wasn't the traditional hit-everything-in-sight Twenty20 innings from them as they first strived to settle in with dabs and nudges before freeing their arms at the end. 

It was off the final delivery of the 15th over that Dhoni managed his first big hit - a six over long-on. And it wasn't till the 18th over that he really went berserk, hitting Laxmi Ratan Shukla for two fours and another six over long-on as he started to work his bottom hand over time.

In the next over, bowled by Shane Bond, he looted three boundaries that included a scorching flatly-pulled six. Badrinath too got in the act, pulling Ishant Sharma for a six in the final over.

Until the final assault from the Chennai duo, nearly everything went according to Plan A for Kolkata. Bond got to swing it at pace, Ishant probed with his seam movement, Murali Kartik was at his canny best, Angelo Matthews was at his nagging self and Shukla kept it really tight as well. But Dhoni's knock proved the difference between a below-par total and a defendable one. 

Kolkata needed a similar partnership but with wickets falling at regular intervals, the chase lacked any momentum and fizzled out very quickly. Within nine deliveries, their heroes from last game, Brad Hodge and Manoj Tiwary, were dismissed - Hodge pulled Albie Morkel to square-leg and Tiwary was bowled, going for an expansive on-the-up drive against Manpreet Gony. And when L Balaji produced the delivery of the game - it kicked up from short of length even as it straightened outside off stump - to catch the edge of Owais Shah, Kolkata were struggling at 46 for 4. 

It required someone to seize the game but there weren't any inspired bursts lower down. Sourav Ganguly dawdled along for a while, unable to break free against a relentless attack of short deliveries into his rib cage, and he fell, swinging Justin Kemp to deep mid-wicket. Much depended on Matthews if Kolkata were to effect a jail break, but he was trapped in front trying to paddle sweep a straight delivery from Kemp. The tail couldn't produce any miracle and Chennai wrapped up the win with five balls to spare.

The same match was covered on the front page headline story of The Telegraph, 17th March, 2010,

Minus20: Night the Knights froze 
Sankarshan Thakur

Calcutta, March 16: The Knights put themselves to sword in a spectacular act of serial hara-kiri tonight, a floodlit crime that darkened Eden’s glow and snuffed the cheer that rang off the stands for a good part of the evening.

Most didn’t bother staying to witness the final stabs inflicted; a hail of discarded ticket-stubs fluttered about in their forlorn wake, each an accusatory FIR posted on the deathwish of their darlings.

The Kings of Chennai have kept their all-win record against the Knights clean, Mahendra Singh Dhoni has stolen the hattrick his predecessor-mentor Sourav Ganguly had set out to achieve today; he has vanquished him three straight times in the IPL. 

The Knights came off the ground with a distinction quite singular, though: no other team this season has conceded such a huge defeat on runs as 55. They failed to bat out their paltry 20 overs, too.

Shah Rukh Khan stood wordless and cross-legged at the post-match presentation; his feet aren’t unlocking into dance anytime soon. It’s a five-in-row vow the Knights’ owner is on; his men must commence their campaign from scratch against the Rajasthan Royals in Ahmedabad on Saturday and their skipper must demonstrate he retains his legendary skills, especially near the top of the order.

In three matches, Sourav has toiled to a monumental 34; his boss refrained from quoting any promises from him tonight.

The Knights will probably get no keener fan than their employer. He leaned on the rails of that contentious open-air deck of his so long, he’s probably suffered a bad back. Often, as Chennai lost wickets early, he turned around to Club House fans and blew kisses and if the rapture they let off was any indication, each of those kisses had defied gravity to pepper the cheeks of maidens and mummys straining on the upper tiers.

Juhi jigged beside Shah Rukh, but he kept his feet firmly planted. Not now, not yet. But his team didn’t offer him another opportunity to think about just a twist on the deck if not a whole routine. After raising expectations heap-high, they plunged right down it.

Shah Rukh vanished off the deck during the interval, leaving behind a diehard band of flag-wavers that had less and less to wave about as the evening wore on. He returned immediately upon Sourav’s dismissal, but by then the Chennai section of the hospitality deck had seized the night.

The DJ seemed to have suddenly misplaced his “korbo, lorbo, jeetbo” disc and was belting out a thunderous Tamil number to which a sprinkling of yellow shirts boogied. Most of the ground did not get a word of it, but it sounded something violently celebratory. The Super Kings were being invited to victory, after all.

Once upon a time this evening, Sourav’s men had their rivals firmly matted on the green. The Super Kings were gasping for life at three down for 55 and 10 overs gone. Then Dhoni walked in, and slowly prised his team free, first nibbling, then grabbing a game that seemed well out of his grasp. Eleven Knights, and not a clue to how to stop a King.

The Super Kings captain reached his 50 off 28 balls, and celebrated it with two more lusty hits off Shane Bond — a flat six at square leg and then a smash through cover for four. S. Badrinath, who would complete an unbeaten match-winning partnership with his skipper, then got into the act, and pummelled Ishant for a huge six over backward square leg, the ball smashing into the debris of the demolished western stand. Hundred-run stand.

The roar in the stands was slowly getting muffled. It began to look distinctly like the Knights had thrown their initial advantage away.

They gave 109 away to the Kings in the last 10 overs and earned themselves a target they could well have kept leashed to comfort.

The Knights made as dismal a start as the Super Kings’ end was stunning — Brad the fancied Hodge holding out at short midwicket to Ashwin off Albie Morkel’s second delivery. Sourav, in the next, survived a scare first up, never seeming to sight one that reared and lodged into his upper groin.

He wouldn’t get off the mark for a whole over, during which another wicket fell — Manoj Tiwary attempting a hattrick of boundaries off Manpreet Gony. Middle stump plucked off the hole.

The Knights would have lost another almost immediately had Hayden not floored one that came booming at him at first slip off Wriddhiman Saha’s flashed blade. Saha went, consumed, like Tiwary, by the greed of over-ambition. Going for a sixth after five hits to the fence.

Lakshmipathy Balaji came on in the next over to immediately claim Owais Shah — the ball smooched the Englishman’s outer edge and cuddled softly into Dhoni’s gloves. Four down for 46 in the seventh.

Sourav asked for a change of bat with which he had scored no more than one. He eked another 10 with the new one, then fell, caught at midwicket on a wretchedly mistimed attempt at sending Justin Kemp beyond the fence. Fifty-five for five.

Kemp came back the next over to pile on the Knights’ misery, grabbing Angelo Mathews plumb in front. Mathews had a lowly outing: no wickets for 29 and only six off the bat. At the end of the eleventh, the Knights had dug a sorry pit and were staring at a soaring required rate, nearly eleven an over. They were seven down for 79. Then eight for 82; Laxmi Ratan Shukla held at the square leg fence by Morkel off Muralitharan.

Rohan Gavaskar arrived and began to bat as if to prompt another bite from his father in the commentary box -- I wouldn’t mind bowling to him either; Rohan scratched a couple, then leapt to keep up with the run rate and plummeted to early death, caught brilliantly by Vijay to become Kemp’s third victim.

Nine gone for 84, and the last pair of Murali Kartik and Ishant did well to hang on and take the score to 109. But they were never going to bat out the full 20 overs.

In the end, Kartik ran himself out and ended what had long turned into a farce.

Hereon, the Knights will wage their campaign away from home for nearly a fortnight, returning to Eden on All Fools Day; the Gardens will probably have regained their humour by then.

Chennai had started their batting endeavour rather pathetically, and the entire stadium for some 12 overs of the designated 20 had been bubbling over with KKR love. Meanwhile there was major bonding happening between me and this fat kid sitting infront, the two of us perhaps the only supporters of CSK anywhere around. SRK walked in fashionably late, and the stadium erupted! Waves, air kisses blown.

And then Dhoni started his hits.

I was screaming, laughing hysterically, and dancing (to the obvious chagrin of everyone around) to DHONIIIIIIIIIIII DHONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

(ok i am really really bored of this post now, posting as it is)