For a newcomer the Eden Gardens will appear nothing very special. On the contrary, the dirty stairway, shrinking space in media centre and press box are bound to give a poor impression about the venue.
But that will be changed if one enters the headquarters of the Cricket Association of Bengal. Some priceless memento hanging in the wall, the photos of many historic moments, some are directly linked to the ground.
They speak about the rich heritage of the ground – one of the oldest in this region and currently the second biggest in the world in terms of seating capacity.
The ground hosted countless historic matches including the World Cup final in 1987 and the Test match between India and Australia in 2001 when India won despite following on.
The ground is also famous for Sachin Tendulkar and Shoaib Akter’ s run-in, Kapil Dev’s first hat-trick, Tendulkar’s penultimate Test match, Rohit’s Sharma’s highest ever one-day international score of 264 .
Incidentally, the ground is also involved with a historic moment of Bangladesh cricket team. In 1990, Bangladesh played against Sri Lanka at the venue when Athar Ali Khan won the man of the match award for his unbeaten 78 despite a huge 71-run loss.
It was the first man of the match award for Bangladesh in their ninth one-day international. Ironically, that has remained the only match for Bangladesh so far in this venue.
It took Bangladesh 26 years to return to Eden Garden, geographically the closest international venue for Bangladesh outside home, as they open their Super10s campaign in the ICC World Twenty20 against Pakistan here today.
Bangladesh skipper Mashrafee bin Murtaza took no offence in this unusual gap but admitted that it was one of his childhood dreams to play here.
‘I don’t want to call us fortunate or unfortunate,’ Mashrafee told reporters on Tuesday. ‘The fact is that it is world’s one of the best venues and we want to play a good match here.
‘It’s a childhood dream for all of us to play at Eden. Of course we will want to make it a memorable game,’ said Mashrafee.
Mashrafee came close to fulfilling his dream of playing at Eden in 2009 when he was picked by Kolkata Knight Riders for the Indian Premier League. But he played just one game in his IPL career which was held in Johannesburg.
Mashrafee’s current team-mate Sakib al Hasan however is a regular member of KKR team for the last few seasons and played a good number of matches at Eden, the home of the franchise.
-With New Age input
