One school has deferred its post-Puja sports activities by a week, while another one, which was scheduled to host an inter-school sports event last month, had to postpone because of the heavy rain this year.

The brunt of the heavy rain was borne by the school grounds, which did not dry up and therefore could not be used for many sporting events, said the authorities.

St James’ School decided to put off its inter-school football by seven days.

Mahadevi Birla World Academy had to cut short the senior school sports practice on Friday after the downpour.

“We have our sports day in mid-November, and started practising as soon as the classes resumed after the Puja vacation last week. However, the heavy rains made it impossible to use the ground, and so the practice has been stalled,” said Nupur Ghosh, vice principal, Mahadevi Birla World Academy.

According to the Met office, Calcutta had received 1,659.2mm of rain from June 1 to September 30 this year. The usual rain in the same period in the past has been 1,345.3mm, the weatherman said.

So far, October has also received significant surplus rain, the Met office said.

“We are on tenterhooks. If it continues like this, sports practice will become a challenge,” said Ghosh.

Rain forced St James’ School to postpone the inter-school football event.

“We decided to defer inter-school events like football because of the intermittent rain. The entire field is not impacted. But water stagnates in some pockets, making it murky. If we were to allow children to play under such circumstances, it could lead to infection,” said Terence Ireland, principal, St James’ School.

Seema Sapru, the sports coordinator for the Bengal region of Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), said many of the council games in September had to be rescheduled and held at later dates.

Some of the games included kho kho, cricket, football and karate.

“Many times the games had to be postponed because the ground was not ready. The schools wanted to host the games but were unable to do so because of the weather,” said Sapru, principal, The Heritage School.

The heavy rain on September 23 had inundated several campuses.

Several schools, particularly those in south Calcutta, took a couple of days to drain out the water from the campus. The ground was flooded, too.