Eden Gardens was the first cricket ground in India to be lit up — and that is now its problem. Age.

Experts on the inquiry team that visited the stadium on Wednesday morning after Sunday’s dark disaster during the Kolkata Knight Riders’ match said the illumination system, installed 15 years ago, had become outdated.

The long-term answer is putting in place a modern lighting arrangement but Shah Rukh Khan’s Knight Riders can’t wait that long to play their matches.

The next match is scheduled for April 29 when Sourav Ganguly’s team goes toe to toe against Sachin Tendulkar’s Mumbai Indians under floodlights.

Prevention of another blackout on that night and on several match nights thereafter is the immediate target of not only the organisers but also of the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government because Sunday was such a blot on Bengal’s image.

Led by Mani Shankar Mukherjee, the government’s joint chief electrical inspector, the inquiry team visited Tower 2 first because Sunday evening’s descent into semi-darkness began there. Each of the four towers on the ground is operated from a control room attached to it.

The team found that this control room — and the three others — had no mechanism to monitor voltage fluctuation, let alone cope with it. Their preliminary diagnosis is that the blackout occurred because of a violent voltage change. A cable fault — a theory floated by some — or any other problem in the network would not have allowed the lights to spring back to life in 20 minutes.

CESC, the power supplier whose representatives were present during the team’s visit, dismissed the possibility of voltage fluctuation, demanding to know if anything in the records suggested so.

Since the control room doesn’t have even the means to monitor voltage, there is no record.

Even if there was a sharp voltage fluctuation, it might not necessarily have been the suppliers’ fault. Sunday’s Indian Premier League match was different from the day-night ODIs played before at the Eden.

Several new elements had been added to jazz up the T20experience and all these were power guzzlers:

• A high-powersound system;

• An illuminated stage for Shah Rukh to perform;

• A separate television studio that needed 10-12 air conditioners.

The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) is responsible for operating and maintaining the lighting system and has outsourced the job to a private company.

The team found the skill levels of the operators inadequate. Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti, the police commissioner, said later: “The team told the CAB to employ operators with better skills and do it immediately.”

Inside the control rooms, the temperature has to be maintained at a certain level to prevent overheating during summer, the team has suggested. These rooms don’t even have fans, not to speak of air conditioners.

Even after all these precautions, the team has said CESC should not supply to other consumers from the same feeders that keep the Eden lit up during matches.

All the recommendations have to be acted upon by April 25.

The lighting system used on the ground is made by Philips, whose representatives accompanied the inquiry team to the Eden on Tuesday.

Experts on in-stadia lighting said all illumination systems using metal halide lamps — as at Eden Gardens — in sports arenas are run by diesel generators because the cost of power failure is too high.

It is not possible, however, to instal these sets by April 29.