Chester Twigg and son Matthew outside the Eden Gardens hours before the IPL final. Picture by Amit Datta

Chester and Matthew Twigg had travelled over 5,000km to watch the last two matches of IPL-6, their love of cricket untouched by the slur of spot-fixing on the sport.

If 48-year-old Chester was worried about something, it was that news of the scandal might colour eight-year-old Matthew’s views on the game he had grown up playing and watching.

So guess what the Calcuttan-turned-Singaporean did to prevent that happening? He banished every newspaper and blocked out all news channels from their hotel room!

“Why is everyone saying that the Mumbai Indians are going to win anyway?” Matthew had asked his father on the eve of the final.

The kid, a Mumbai Indians fan, had apparently overheard someone saying that the winner of the final had already been decided.

“I gathered with some discomfort that he (Matthew) knew something wishy-washy was going on. I did not know what to say because we both love cricket so much,” recounted Chester, who lived in Dover Lane and studied at La Martiniere in the Seventies.

“I told my son that nothing had been proved yet and that the authorities were looking into all the allegations. I also said that he should just enjoy the game.”

Father and son had started making plans to watch the second qualifier and final of IPL-6 around 45 days ago, long before the spot-fixing scandal broke. Tickets were difficult to get but Chester was determined.

“The ticketing website showed that all tickets available online had been sold out. But I kept checking and when a few tickets became available, I grabbed them,” said Chester, who had been following IPL-6 on StarHub channel in Singapore.

Father and son arrived in the city on Friday afternoon, minus the cricket-immune women in the family — Chester’s wife Harpreet and daughter Mexine, 16. They were in their Block-L seats at the Eden a few hours later to watch the Mumbai Indians carve out a hard-fought victory over the Rajasthan Royals.

On Saturday, the Twiggs were out about town, Chester reliving old memories and his son trying to learn more about the city where his father once lived.

The duo have been to Dover Lane, where Chester lived for eight years, the International Club, New Market, St. Thomas’ Church on Free School Street and La Martiniere for Boys, which Matthew said he liked the best.

“This is Matthew’s first visit to Calcutta, which I consider my hometown as I have wonderful memories of my school days here. Thankfully, there were a lot of places that I wanted him to see. So we were away from the hotel room and, more importantly, the television, which in India is full of news on the fixing right now,” Chester, a senior executive with Procter and Gamble, said.

As a schoolboy in Calcutta of the Seventies, Chester had watched several Test matches at the Eden Gardens. His favourite memories are of Sunil Gavaskar’s masterful batting and B.S. Chandrasekhar’s magical bowling.

Spot-fixing, probably, didn’t exist then. Neither did 24x7 television news channels. Even in China, where Chester had been based for seven years before moving to Singapore, news would be filtered by the state the way he is now trying to do for son Matthew.

“Whenever we have been in the hotel room, I have taken care to stick to Nickelodeon or some other kids’ channel,” Chester said with a smile. “In China, many newspapers are blocked online but because I wanted to stay abreast of news, I used to have newspapers from Calcutta delivered to me by courier…. It’s ironic that I am avoiding newspapers and news channels sitting in my own city now.”

Chester and Matthew fly back to Singapore on Monday, taking back with them memories of cricket and Calcutta.

So had the fixing scandal come to light before they bought the tickets, would they still have come?

“I guess, yes,” Chester said. “Probably because I desperately want to believe that not too many players in this great game are involved.”