Date-stamped : 09 Dec94 - 14:26 Oh, to be in Eden ! -- Tony Cozier Like every other Indian experience nothing can properly prepare the uninitiated to the splendor of Eden Gardens, packed to a capacity for a grand final under lights involving India. Twenty years ago, on my last visit, it had been imposing enough but those were the days before it had been transformed into the giant modern sports stadium it now is. The MCG was already capa- bale of accommodating its 100,000 crowds in a city as famously passionate over its sport as Calcutta and, in 1974, Eden Gardens didn`t quite match its structural grandeur, even it did its spine tingling atmosphere. The two venues have unergone several changes in the interim and the Eden Gardens now loses nothing by comparison in terms of ac- commodation. Australians may find it difficult to accept, but nothing I have experienced at the MCG - a World Cup and several World series finals plus six Tests - holds a candle to my first taste of a big match in Calcutta by night. Perhaps it is because the MCG stages so many big matches in vari- ous sporting codes that Melbournians have become blase about it all. More than 50,000 of them turn out probably a dozen times a year for football and cricket and over 90,000 for the big finals. In Calcutta the Big ones comes around, like Divali, just once a year. But there is also the cultural difference, the westernized order of the Australia compared to the bewildering pandemonium of India outside the stadiums. At the MCG, there is hardly a policeman to be seen as the crowds stream in; in Calcutta, they are every- where, their function apparently is to add to the sense of chaos for no one seems to take the slightest notice of them. If the passions inside the ground are the same and the decibel count deafening, there are distinctly different ways of expres- sion. And Eden Gardens is like nowhere else on the sporting earth. After their crashing defeats last year in the Hero Cup and this year in the Wills World Series, the West Indies might well consider it more appropriate if it is renamed Hell Gardens com- plete with fire and brim stone. Nowhere in the world do spectators celebrate their favorite team`s success by setting light to fire works and anything com- bustible they might lay their hands on. When there are 100,000 in the ground, the customary roar to greet a home team boundary or opposition wicket is intimidating enough. When it is accompanied by the explosion of hundreds of crackers, some of nuclear inten- sity, and the twinkling sparklers that fill the air with acrid smoke, it tests courage of even the most battle hardened of cricketers. Not being in Calcutta for the last year Hero Cup Finals I cannot say what caused the crushing West Indian defeat then. It was re- ported back in the Caribbean that Richie Richardson made an obvi- ously wrong decision in choosing to bat last on a pitch worn by use in preceeding semi-finals and in an atmosphere filled with mist, smoke and hordes of night bugs drawn by powerful lights. This time thay again had to bat in the same conditions, although not by their own choosing, and they were never in contention. It was infact the third successive one day finals that the West Indies had lost at eden Gardens although the other was to Pakis- tan in the Nehru Cup in 1989. Then, was in day time and went down to the last over. It is a strange phenomenon how sporting teams and individuals come to believe that certain venues have a jinx on them. For years, it was the Queens Park Oval in Port-of Spain and the Syd- ney Cricket Ground that the West Indies feared like plague. Eden Gardens has now gone into that category and the evil spell that it has cast three times in succession can only be exorciseed by a victory. Perhaps their next opportunity will be the World Cup but they will pray they don`t encounter India. For all that, Sir Gary Sobers, back in the land - where his all round genius was first seen in the 1958 - 1959 series - as a television commentator, had a valid point when he observed that to come to India and not have a Test in calcutta is tantamount to going to England and not having a test at Lord`s. Perhaps he is being old fashioned and perhaps he has not recog- nized the reality that certain administrators, guided purely by commercial considerations, couldn`t give a firework for Test cricket. But it does seem incongruous that Tests have been scheduled this tour for Nagpur and Chandigarh, fine cities and sporting people that they may be, while Eden gardens lies fallow for yet another year before its next one day final. We may have to wait until the day, soon to come surely, when Test cricket is played under lights to have the next Test there. The West Indies would be grateful if it`s not theirs, just yet. Contributed by Sarvesh (sarve@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu)