The Hindu Business Line : Test matches in Kolkata

The India-Pakistan test match just held at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata has become different ball-game today compared to what it has been in the past. This is undoubtedly a sad development because it makes the city a bit more unrecognisable to those who consider it, warts and all, to be Heaven in Paradise.

Variety in dress, spring in gait,

In the past years — from, perhaps, the sixties — the holding of a Test match in Kolkata was nothing more than an extended, five-day carnival which had the city on edge, as it were. From early morning, one could see an unending stream of spectators — young and old, in colourful winter attire, and with the ubiquitous lunch bag — making its way to a bus stop or taxi stand on the way to the Gardens. Apart from the variety in dress and the spring in the gait, what struck one was the animated conversation those going to see the day’s play were nearly always engaged in, quite clearly expostulating — with attendant, appropriate gesticulations — on the previous day’s play and what they were about to witness on the field.

In fact, it would not be wrong to say that, on these occasions, the city was totally caught up with only topic of conversation, namely, cricket, the place being filled all of a sudden with thousands of expert commentators on the most abstruse nuance of the game. The remarkable thing is that not all the knowledge that gushed out into the Kolkata air on those days was spurious. People had really done their homework and had come specially prepared for the day’s play, reeling off the names of cricketers of yesteryear and statistics with an ease and confidence that would put the popular radio and TV commentators into the shade.

Every means of transport in the city from around 7.30 in the morning would be headed one way — to the Eden Gardens which, in those days, did not have the four, quite off-putting, light-towers, and (even earlier) no concrete stands all around the ground. The area around the venue of the game was in fact off-limits to everyone except those who had a ticket in their hand, and the queues at the gates wound their way some distance, with the young and old frantically trying to join them at their tails, wherever they were. To those who had other, uncricketing chores to fulfil on the day, Central Kolkata was out of bounds because of the traffic snarls — made even worse by hordes of spectators weaving their way through the stalled vehicles on the road, hurrying to get into the field as early as possible.

Sporting spark missing

All this was missing during the past few days. Even the stands in the ground were quite empty for sizable stretches of the match. The car parks along Red Road appeared vacuous and the policemen on duty, clearly, had no work to do. On the first day of the match, this correspondent, recalling past experience, avoided the area and went to his car-park by a circuitous route. But he did not have to go through the same trouble the next day because there were no crowds to avoid.

Clearly, Test matches in Kolkata have become a different sort of thing today compared to what they were in the past. This is bad for the city because it takes away from its abiding character and personality a sporting spark which, one would like to imagine, had made the Calcutta of the olden days so much more different than the other comparable cities of the subcontinent.

RANABIR RAY CHOUDHURY