Floodlights problem may lead IPL out of Eden Garden
Kolkata’s Eden Gardens may lose out on hosting day and night matches of the next season of the Indian Premier League after floodlights went out on Thursday during the fourth one-dayer between India and Sri Lanka.
Two of the four floodlights towers went off on Thursday during the Lankan innings, which halted the game for 23 minutes.
The Kolkata Police, menwhile, has formed a 7-member panel to probe into the incident and said that no day and night matches will be played at the stadium till the solution of the problem is found out.
Sources claim that if the condition persists, the stadium may also miss out on hosting D/N IPL matches in 2010.
Just when pacer Ashish Nehra was about to bowl the third ball of the last over in Sri Lankan innings at 5.59 pm on Thursday, the light near the giant scoreboard went off, leaving the field with inadequate light.
Players and umpires waited for sometime before leaving the field at 6.06pm.
After sometime, the floodlights started glowing again before reaching its full strength at 6.20 pm. The cricketers then took to the field and the match was resumed.
Embarrassing as it seems incidents similar to this have occurred in the past at the Eden Gardens.
In April 20 last year, the power went out for nearly 25 minutes at Eden Gardens during the IPL match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers. The power failure had nearly derailed the match, much to the embarrassment of the city.
A Calcutta Electricity Supply Corporation spokesperson, ealier, said there was no fault from their end as there was no tripping or voltage flucutation.
“We have no fault as there was no problem in the power supply. Maintainance of the tower is not our responsibility. There seems to be a technical snag in one of the lights that led to the light-out,” he said.
CAB President, Jagmohan Dalmiya, on the other hand, denied having any knowledge on what could possibly lead to such a thwarting incident and refused to comment anything concrete on the issue.
However, all fingers are being pointed on CAB for the lapses on Thursday, as enquiry revealed that floodlights bulb that went off had not been changed since 1993. Also, it has been found out that the stadium doesn’t have any generator of UPS back-up for such unforeseen situations.
This raises a huge question mark on CAB’s potential to host international day-night matches in the future.
via Floodlights problem may lead IPL out of Eden Garden.
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