Shah Rukh Khan, who owns Kolkata Knight Riders, and Nita Ambani, whose husband Mukesh Ambani owns Mumbai Indians, at the Eden on Tuesday. Picture by Pabitra Das

Calcutta, April 29: The only blue flags in the sea of black and gold that was Eden tonight were flying in the lower right-hand corner of the Club House where Kolkata Knight Riders owner Shah Rukh Khan sat.

Next to him was Nita Ambani, whose husband owns the Mumbai Indians who beat the Knight Riders by seven wickets, and her children Isha, Akash and Anant. The Knight Riders are supported by the ABP Group, the publishers of The Telegraph.

For the first time in the very competitive Indian Premier League, two team owners watched a match together. “He wanted the Ambanis to sit in the same area of the Club House and enjoy the match with his invitees,” a source at SRK’s Red Chillies said.

Shah Rukh was very much the star of Vijay Mallya’s after-match party in Bangalore, but the rival team owners were not seen together during IPL’s inaugural game.

Tonight, though, it was hosts first, opponents later.

Knight Riders co-owner Juhi Chawla gave up her front row seat five overs into the first innings, to make way for the Ambanis. They didn’t stay to watch their team pick up its first win though, leaving during the innings break. SRK escorted Nita out of the galleries.

Eden was spared a repeat of the first night fiasco, when the floodlights went off and there wasn’t enough water.

Not everything went as planned, though. Two 1.5-tonne ACs fitted in the floodlight control rooms were not enough, so fans were brought in and doors opened; one of the 215 bulbs in each floodlight tower did not work; and power went off in Gates No. 13, 14, 15 and 16 between 7.15 and 7.40. But these were minor hiccups.

The big disappointment was on the field, where Dwayne Bravo and Robin Uthappa robbed the 80,000-strong black-and-gold crowd’s hopes of an encore at Eden.

Mukesh Ambani, who has skipped all his team’s away matches, wasn’t here to celebrate. The Reliance Industries owner could not have mixed work with play even if he came, since there was no chance of running into chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee who had announced he would not watch the match.

Even if Ambani dropped in on Bhattacharjee, they would have had little to discuss. Reliance’s plans for Bengal have not made much headway: the retail project is stuck and a gas pipeline is three years away.

The only showbiz faces from Mumbai tonight were Sameera Reddy, sister Meghna Reddy and Riya Sen.

The Jeets and Jisshus took over from the Bollywood brigade who had dominated Day One. Rituparno Ghosh, Roopa Ganguly, Debasree Roy, Usha Uthup and Biplab Chatterjee added to the local flavour.

In the second innings, Shah Rukh joined his Knights at the dugout to give them much-needed support. But this meant the stands were robbed a view of the self-confessed “country’s biggest entertainer”.

Not for long, though — SRK started his Dard-e-disco right at the fence. He obviously had a better platform in mind when he had the stage uprooted from faraway Block J.

But it wasn’t easy to spot the man. While every second person came wearing the KKR “Khan 12” jersey, King Khan was in a black, full-sleeved T-shirt embossed with a big golden helmet. Like the one presented to Man-of-the-Match Sanath Jayasuriya, worth Rs 15 lakh, and the one being sold outside the ground for Rs 100.