Boria Majumdar
As we get ready for the first Test match of the India-South Africa series at Eden Gardens, we have to ask that most clichéd question – will there be a sizeable crowd at Eden to watch Shubman Gill and team play?
The real legacy of Sourav Ganguly, as an administrator trying to lead from the front, will be in trying to get the masses back to watching Test cricket at Eden Gardens. And from the looks of it, Sourav is clearly on the right track. Not very long ago, Eden Gardens was full for a Test match. In 2001, for example, close to 100,000 people watched India beat Australia in what is now remembered as the most dramatic Test match ever.
As far as the IPL is concerned, there is nothing that any state association needs to do. Tickets sell on their own and there is always more demand than supply. Test matches are different, and the bigger the venue, the greater the challenge is. That’s where the efforts on the part of CAB need to be appreciated. I was pleased to see the queues in front of Eden Gardens yesterday, and all tickets on the District app are also getting sold out.
If we take India’s tour of Australia last December or the tour of England this summer, almost every venue and every day of the series witnessed sell-out crowds. The last day at The Oval, which witnessed just 57 minutes of action, was watched by a packed stadium. This is where we need to do better in India. We need to decode why people have decided to stay away and are refusing to come and watch an Indian team that is now doing extremely well under Gill and Gautam Gambhir. Why is it that we only want to watch the IPL in India, and not Test cricket? What does that say about the so-called Indian cricket fan?
It is important to state here that the BCCI has in the past paid a corpus to every staging association to organise promotional activities around a Test match. While this was a welcome step and one in the right direction, one wonders why they were forced to do so. School and college activations are essential, and may be the CAB can get a series of former players involved to spread the message.
While attendances of 70,000 and more, like seen at the MCG, will not happen overnight, a start can certainly be made in Kolkata on November 14. That’s what Ganguly is determined to do and is trying very hard to ensure. Against the world Test champions, the quality of cricket will be top drawer. The weather is fantastic in Kolkata, and everything is ideal for Test cricket. The match is expected to be a high-quality affair and if you are a cricket fan, you should surely buy a ticket and make it to Eden. Ticket prices have been kept at their lowest to encourage the fan who misses out on IPL, and this is indeed an opportunity. Hope people make the most of it and turn up to support Team India.
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