A young fan embodies the carnival spirit of the IPL at the Eden Gardens on Friday. (Amit Datta)

I have been living outside India since 2005, so I’ve never had the chance to watch an IPL match live in a stadium. Also, I fancy Test cricket, and some experts, notably those from England and Australia, seem to regard IPL as the bane of Test cricket. So I was curious to have a first-hand experience of the IPL to form an opinion about it.

The first strikingly different thing that I noticed as I entered the Eden Gardens on Friday evening was the loud music, the splash of light, the continuous chanting of the DJs and the advertisements blinking near the boundary line. To me, whose only experience of watching cricket in stadiums was limited to Test matches, it seemed more a concert than a cricket match.

But as I settled down, I started to like the atmosphere in a concert sort of way. Before discussing more differences, let me first start with an analogy which most of you can easily relate to. There are two girls in your class at school or tuition, Seeta and Geeta. Seeta is demure and dresses modestly. She is presentable but not an exquisite beauty. While shy, she is still approachable and pleasant to talk to, and is generally well-liked.

Her attraction seems to grow on you as you know her more and more. Geeta is different. She dresses boldly, oozes sensuality and is quite a head-turner. She has a fan following and seems to enjoy it. Some classmates dislike her for her attitude, but no one can ignore her.

Seeta embodies Test cricket. She is not as appealing from the outside. You need to spend some time with her to appreciate her. Geeta, with her in-your-face appeal forcing you to turn your head and look at her, is IPL.

Many seem to argue about which one is better, and especially whether Test matches will survive the onslaught of IPL and other domestic T20 leagues. From my IPL “night-out” I feel that both formats have their usefulness, and can complement each other.

I talked to the people near me. There were a few young guys in their early twenties, and a couple with their 10-year-old son. None of them has ever watched a Test match at the Eden Gardens. They were not cricket connoisseurs, and would earlier have gone to a cineplex for a nice evening. The older, knowledgeable crowd whom I used to meet during my Test match-watching days in the late ’80s and ’90s, who used to speak of Gundappa Vishwanath’s square-cut of a fired-up Andy Roberts in 1974 as if it happened yesterday, was not there. However, as long as they keep coming to Test matches, no harm is done.

To conclude, I think the popularity of T20 matches need not come at the cost of Test cricket, but both can co-exist and gain from each other, like movies (or music) of different genres. I, for one, recently watched The Life of Pi and Skyfall, and enjoyed both in their own way.

(Subhadip, a South Point boy, now teaches economics at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver)

Do you only go to watch the IPL at Eden Gardens? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com