On the final day of the final Test match between India and England at the Oval, when any sane cricket fan would have said that England would walk away with the series with the team only 35 runs away from victory, Indian fans thronged the stadium, knowing that the result was only an hour or so away. Loyalists like no other, for the first time in the series, the Indian fans were able to dominate the stadium with a sea of blue. As Mohammed Siraj and Prasidh Krishna continued their relentless attack with the ball, sending one batter walking after another, the crowd played the role of the twelfth man. Cheering every dot ball, applauding every effort in the field, every run saved, and mourning every run conceded. Looking back on the final 58 minutes of madness at the Oval, you realise that the crowd too had a cosmic role to play in the win. While Siraj believed in himself to pull off a heist, the crowd’s belief in the team changed the thread of fate to bring India the victory.
A similar situation arose at Eden Gardens yesterday. While it was far from Day 5, on the morning of Day 3, India were in the driver’s seat, in control until they weren’t. Temba Bavuma and Corbin Bosch were firmly at the crease, and the faith of the crowd in an Indian victory grew with every footstep walking in. At 10:20 am, on a bright Sunday morning, the crowd count had already gone up to 27,388. Almost an hour later, at 11:12 am, the spectator count rose to 36,562, with every hour going by and the match getting spicier with a late Bavuma-Bosch partnership, people kept pouring in. India needed 124 runs to win, and as wickets fell, the chances of a successful chase looked increasingly difficult. But the crowd left no stone unturned and by noon, the spectator count had gone up to a whopping 39,769.
The total started looked daunting. Sitting amongst the crowd, I realised they were as involved as the players in the game, some became pundits, some turned into devotees. Some praying, some analysing. Some furious, some regretful. The crowd truly believed that their support could turn the tide for India. Especially after India had lost Sundar, Rahul, Rishabh Pant and Dhruv Jurel. They knew that the onus was on Ravindra Jadeja and Axar Patel to make the chase. There was thunderous applause after every single taken, and a grimace after every tricky run, fans muttering under their breath “be careful”, “there’s no need for that”.
Ashok, the KKR superfan, donned his India costume for the Test. The crowd could vaguely hear his shankh going off in the upper stands, and when the going got tough he ran to the end of the stand overlooking the other and started yelling at the top of his lungs, asking the crowd to keep cheering on.
A day ago, during India’s first innings, when the team were all out and the batters started returning to the pavilion, RevSportz’s Ashok Namboodiri was sitting in the Club House lower tier stand when suddenly someone grabbed him from behind. It was a fan who had only come to the stadium in the second session and had misread the severity of Shubman Gill’s injury. He had a shocking look on his face and his voice trembled as he asked, “Will Shubman Gill not come out to bat?”, he was distraught to learn that Gill was unlikely to return and subsequently asked Ashok to recount every detail of the injury as he sat there disheartened.
While India eventually lost to their own ploy of a rank turner, much like the New Zealand series, the Eden Gardens crowd, after a wait of six long years, soaked in every minute of the Test match.
If anything, yesterday proved one thing: Eden Gardens doesn’t need a final day to rise. With the crowds showing up the way they did, the people became larger than the sport, and larger than the outcome.