Lights come on at the Eden Gardens on the eve of the Kolkata Knight Riders’ match against the Rajasthan Royals. Picture by Pabitra Das

The lamps that light up the Eden Gardens when big boys in pyjamas play cricket at night are no longer dependable because of age, officials said on Monday.

The problem was detected during a post-mortem of the partial blackout on Sunday night, when 27 lamps in each floodlight tower went out. That was shortly after Ashoke Dinda of the Kolkata Knight Riders blinked and dropped a sitter, and the wind and rain came howling.

The point of disagreement between the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and CESC was why the “ageing” lights went out together, and exactly the same number in each tower.

CAB officials blamed “a wild voltage fluctuation” in the supply line, but CESC executives said there was no “abnormal fluctuation” at any point.

“We said it could be that the lamps went out because they could not withstand the normal voltage fluctuation, which is up to six per cent. Had there been a major voltage fluctuation, then all the lamps would have been affected. The old lamps have to be replaced,” a senior CESC official said.

The lights will come on again on Tuesday, when the Knights take on the IPL team to beat, the Rajasthan Royals. “We have assured them (the CAB) that we will ensure normal voltage from our end,” the CESC official said.

A team from Philips will be present at the Eden to monitor the lamps. “It is not possible to replace more than 100 lamps at short notice. So we have left it to Philips engineers to keep the lights working,” a CAB member said.

Another decision taken at the meeting, attended by senior police and government officials, was to withdraw 10 per cent of the tickets for blocks C and D to avoid “overcrowding”. Almost 15 per cent of the tickets for Block E have been withdrawn, too. This is in addition to the 30 per cent of Block B tickets that were withdrawn earlier.

“Some of the seats in these blocks were damaged during Sunday’s storm and need to be repaired,” the deputy commissioner of police (headquarters), Vineet Goyel, said.

The two giant screens will be supported by moulded pipes and no billboard will be allowed atop the galleries for the next two IPL matches.

“One of the billboards fell on Sunday after an iron clamp gave way, injuring a member of the audience,” police commissioner Gautam Mohan Chakrabarti said.