A sleepy bandh day made way for a noisy IPL evening as 67,000 fans packed into the Eden Gardens on Thursday to cheer their Knights to victory.
Long before the stadium opened at 6pm - with two hours to go for the first ball to be bowled - there were hundreds of fans queuing up in front of each of the 19 gates. The police, who had been busy all day trying to make the city look normal in the middle of a shutdown, seemed to be caught unawares by the sudden surge of people.
The roads leading to Eden were a riot of colour and sound - fans with their faces painted in purple or yellow, many of them blowing whistles and waving flags as they walked briskly towards the stadium.
Although the bandh had ended by then, there was still the 24-hour transport strike to contend with before reaching Eden. Manoj Agarwal, an ENT specialist, didn't want to take a chance and arrived three hours early for the 8pm match.
"We came by car, bracing for trouble along the way. We knew that there would be diversions too. So we decided to come out well in advance," said Manoj, standingin front of Gate No. 3 around 5pm with his wife and children.
Few people in the stands seemed worried about not finding public transport to return home after the end of the match around 11.30pm. Shubham Jhawar, an MBA student who was there with friend Nidhi Maheswari, said he would try to hail a taxi to reach home or call a friend with a motorbike to give a lift.
"In any case, so many people will be leaving the ground together that even walking back to my home on Elgin Road should not be a problem. Otherwise, I have the option of asking a friend for a bike ride," Shubham said.
Three Tata Steel employees from Odisha reached Howrah by train at 2pm and headed straight for the stadium around 3pm. They had planned to book a hotel first but decided not to do so after hearing about the bandh.
While they reached Eden ahead of time for the match, the trio weren't sure where they would spend the night after the cricket ended. "We will look for hotels. If we don't get anything, we wouldn't mind spending the night at Howrah station and taking the first train home in the morning. The match comes first and we couldn't have missed it for anything," said Pratap Singh, one of the three friends.
According to a policeman who has been on IPL duty several times, fans usually start converging on Eden around 5.30pm for a match scheduled to start at 8pm.
On Thursday, the flow started as early as 4pm. "The guardrails we use to keep the queues straight and cordon off the area in front of the clubhouse hadn't arrived when the procession of fans started. We were forced to deploy mounted police to guard the VIP entrance," said an officer.
The ground filled up even as the two teams limbered up and practised their shots and high catches, all of which drew loud cheers. By the time the public address system roared to life around 7.15am, Eden had found its mojo.
"I am in the middle of my term break and was bored to death doing nothing during the day. I was counting the hours when I would be here," said Soumya Sekhar Gangopadhyay, a student of English at Scottish Church College.
Soumya first went from his Golf Green home to his former APJ School classmate Saraswat Chatterjee's residence in Salt Lake. The two friends then headed for Eden in Saraswat's car.
By the time Gautam Gambhir won the toss and decided to field, Eden was a full house. Usually, the crowd is still trooping in when the first ball of a match is bowled. Thursday evening was different.
The party had begun much earlier and the dancing started in the stands the moment the speakers started blaring Bollywood hits like Tu tu tu from Bang Bang, Sunny Sunny from Yaariyan and Abhi toh party shuru hui hain from Khoobsurat.
"This is the spirit of Calcutta. The entire day, I was confined to my room at Hotel Kenilworth. As I walked to the ground around 5.30pm, everything was still shut on Park Street. And, suddenly, every seat here is taken!" said Mumbai resident and self-proclaimed "SRK maniac" Sonal.
The music website employee leapt for joy and screamed along with the rest of the stadium as Ryan Ten Doeschate flew at point a la Jonty Rhodes to dismiss Dwayne Smith for a golden duck.
The rousing start to the match was the perfect reward for Calcuttans who had skipped office but braved transport and law-and-order uncertainty to reach the ground ahead of time to cheer for their team.
Later, when Brad Hogg, the oldest player on the ground, took four wickets and fielded like he was 24, a father in the stands told his schoolboy son: "He is 44. Look how fit he has kept himself."
At Eden, as bandh day proved, it's never just about runs and wickets.
