Chennai, April 26: When cricket’s in the air, even a tsunami scare can’t drench the ardour of fans.

Let alone a power cut, though the blackout blighted the electronic scoreboard for nearly an hour.

The game gambolled on, as two manually operated boards rose to the occasion to ensure that the match wasn’t interrupted, unlike at Calcutta’s Eden Gardens last Sunday where the floodlights went out for 31 minutes.

In Chennai, it was morning, as they say, that showed the day as fans shook off the scare of another tsunami to gather in thousands for the second IPL match at the M.A. Chidambaram stadium, where the Kolkata Knight Riders were playing the Chennai Super Kings.

It hardly mattered that the stadium is a stone’s throw from Marina beach, which was ravaged by the 2004 tsunami a day after Christmas.

Hundreds clapped and tapped to the beats of drummer Sivamani as they cheered both the teams.

Earlier in the day, residents of Chennai had woken up to reports that Tamil Nadu’s coastline could again be under a threat after a pilot of a Tiruchirappalli-bound plane saw an “unusually huge wave” in the Bay of Bengal on Thursday morning.

Regional Met office director S.R. Ramanan, however, said neither any undersea quake nor any unusual atmospheric development had been reported to warrant a panic reaction, though the state administration had been alerted.

But cricket fever swept away any tsunami scare. And such was the enthusiasm, the fans even took the power cut in their stride.

Minutes after the match began this afternoon at 4, the power went off at the press box.

Even nearly an hour later, linemen were still working on the fault, prompting a friendly jab from a scribe at former Test opener Krishnamachari Srikkanth, a brand ambassador for the match.

“Krish,” the journalist gibed, “you must speak to the electricity minister and do something.”