Calcutta: A full house and a bit of a drizzle with lights on for the first time at the East Bengal ground called for an ideal start to the football season.
But the drizzle soon turned into a downpour, which only worsened the ground condition. Eventually, the CFL Premier Division A opener on Friday had to be called off with East Bengal and Tollygunge Agragami locked 1-1 at half-time. A replay will be scheduled some time later.
Both teams were out on the ground after half-time when rain had relented. It looked as if the second session would get underway, but within a while match officials were seen speaking to captains of both teams after which the game was called off.
Strangely, when conditions were a lot worse late in the first half the game was allowed to continue. Match commissioner Bikash Mukherjee, when queried, said: “Even though conditions got better during half-time, there was no guarantee whether the ball would roll properly (on the ground). Players risked getting seriously injured. So, we preferred not to continue.”
East Bengal had taken the lead in the second minute through Kassim Aidara. At the half-hour mark, Lago Bei levelled the scores.
“We wanted the game to go ahead, but their captain (Lalram Chullova) said they didn’t want to play any further,” remarked senior Tollygunge player Ashim Biswas.
Tollygunge coach Monoranjan Bhattacharya added: “Rain had stopped during half-time and conditions too were better then for the game to resume. All of us could see that.”
The blame game continued as East Bengal claimed it was Tollygunge who wanted the game to be called off. “It was their manager who kept on asking the match officials to call the game off,” said East Bengal technical director Subhas Bhowmick.
“I just told the match officials to either get on with the game or call it off because there was no point standing on the ground. Before half-time when it was much worse, we were constantly telling the linesman to stop the game. Any of the players could have sustained an ankle injury, which I feared the most.
“Now if our captain has really said that he and his teammates didn’t want to continue playing, he has every right to say so. No one would want to get injured playing on such a surface,” Bhowmick added.
