Kolkata: In a major embarrassment for the organisers, the Eden Gardens which is hosting the fourth One-Day International (ODI) between India and Sri Lanka was left with inadequate lights when one of the four flood light towers went off, delaying the proceedings by 23 minutes.
Memories of the Deccan Chargers vs Kolkata Knight Riders match in IPL 2008 came to mind when the tower light just behind the big scoreboard near D Block near the High Court end fazed out.
Just when pacer Ashish Nehra was about to bowl the third ball of the last over in Sri Lankan innings at 1759 hrs IST, the light near the gaint scoreboard went off, leaving the field with inadequate light.
Players and umpires waited for sometime before leaving the field at 1806 hrs IST.
After sometime, the floodlights started glowing again before reaching its full strength at 1820 hrs IST. The cricketers then took to the field and the match was resumed.
Incidentally, this is the same tower which was tripped on the earlier occasions.
A Calcutta Electricity Supply Corporation spokesperson said there was no fault from their end as there was no tripping or voltage flucutation.
"We have no fault as there was no problem in the power supply. Maintainance of the tower is not our responsibility. There seems to be a technical snag in one of the lights that led to the light-out," he said.
Incidentally, the hosts Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) had a dry run of the tower light for about a week before the match, yet it developed a glitch.
In April 20 last year, a similar incident happened when the power went out for nearly 25 minutes at Eden Gardens during the IPL match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Deccan Chargers.
The power failure had nearly derailed the match, much to the embarrassment of the city.
What followed then was a blame game between the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation.
There was another instance of a light out during a India vs Japan pre-World cup match in 2005.
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