World T20: Eden Gardens embarrassed as blackout delays match

Kolkata, March 26: The iconic Eden Gardens stadium was embarrassed today due to a recurrence of a blackout when one of the four floodlight towers went off, delaying the ICC World Twenty20 Super 10 match between New Zealand and Bangladesh by 15 minutes.

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Just after Grant Elliott bowled the 11th over with Bangladesh reeling at 45/6 in their chase of 146, the High Court end towers went off, bringing back the memories of India-Sri Lanka ODI match way back on December 24, 2009.

With bad light the players left the field as it took about 15 minutes to restore the proceedings. Incidentally, this is the same tower which had tripped on previous occasions.

The India-Sri Lanka match in the ODI series was held up for 23 minutes because of power failure in the same tower.

In another incident during an IPL 2008 match of Deccan Chargers versus Kolkata Kinght Riders the play had to be stopped for 25 minutes.

What later followed was a blame game between the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) and the Calcutta Electric Supply Corporation and it remains to be seen what the administration led by former India captain Sourav Ganguly has to say about the mess in a world tournament.

Blackouts are a regular phenomena at the gigantic football venue of Saltlake Stadium with the most embarrasing being the blackout during an India vs Japan pre-World cup match in 2005.

PTI