Calcutta, April 20: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s old Calcutta tonight spoiled the introduction of Shah Rukh Khan’s Calcutta to new-age cricket.

A 31-minute floodlight failure, a dead scorecard and waterless toilets at the Eden reinforced the city’s reputation for mismanagement and inefficiency before a national TV audience, glamour guests and foreign players and coaches.

Cricket Association of Bengal president Prasun Mukherjee — who headed city police when the force interfered in the marriage of Rizwanur Rahman — ducked when asked whether he would accept responsibility and resign.

Instead, he and his men washed their hands of every goof-up and blamed SRK’s Red Chillies Entertainment, power supplier CESC and the public works department (PWD), which maintains the stadium and the floodlight towers.

A CAB official claimed Red Chillies had accepted the job of operating the scoreboard, but this did not seem to square with his boss’s admission that Shah Rukh was left fuming by the fiasco.

Prasun said an angry SRK asked the CAB tonight to ensure this didn’t happen again. “He requested me to take the responsibility (for the scoreboard) and we will get going from tomorrow,” he said.

The CAB appeared clueless about the floodlight failure, putting it down to a cable fault and saying the CESC was responsible, shortly before the PWD accepted blame.

“There was a mechanical fault in one of the towers. It took about 15 minutes to repair. We apologise for the disruption,” PWD minister Kshiti Goswami said after CESC had denied a power failure.

The dry toilets were “for the PWD to explain”, a CAB official said. “They did not pump enough water.”

Nor was there enough water to drink, but this time the fault was Red Chillies’.

“They had delayed informing the pouch supplier,” the CAB official said.

Having blamed everybody, Prasun said: “I don’t want to get into a blame game. It will serve no purpose.” He anxiously added: “No one can be singled out….”

Not, according to him, even curator Kalyan Mitra, architect of one of the day’s biggest disappointments – a minefield of a wicket that mocked the concept of Twenty20 power-hitting.

Visiting captain V.V.S. Laxman and team-mate Adam Gilchrist found the pitch “absolutely shocking”.

Mitra avoided the media but Prasun promised: “The next match will be played on a different surface.”

Mitra had laid the infamous wicket for the 1996 World Cup semi-final that led to a stunning Indian collapse and a riot in the stands, causing India to forfeit the match. He had then taken a sabbatical but resumed charge in May last year.

Former CAB chief Jagmohan Dalmiya didn’t want to comment, saying: “Everyone saw what happened. Whatever I say will lead to a controversy.”

The Eden crowd, however, sat patiently through its ordeals.

The same people – and many more Calcuttans – must suffer another of the city’s old diseases tomorrow when the Trinamul Congress and the SUCI protest against price rise with a 12-hour bandh.

CPM leader Shyamal Chakraborty’s assurance that cadres would oppose the bandh was poor solace – his party has done enough over the decades to ensure that it’s impossible to foil a shutdown in Bengal.