Eden Gardens – The Home of Indian Cricket

Basic Details about Eden Gardens

City: Kolkata, India

Address: Eden Garden Road, Kolkata, West Bengal, India – 700021

Established in: 1864

Owner and Operator: Cricket Association of Bengal

Capacity: 85, 000 fans

First Test Match: India Vs England, 5^th January, 1934

First One Day International: India Vs Pakistan, 3^rd January, 1987

Ends: High Court End and Pavilion End

Tenants: The Indian Cricket Team, Bengal Cricket Team and Kolkata Knight Riders

More about Eden Gardens

If you are an Indian and a cricket fan then Eden Gardens Stadium of Kolkata is nothing less than Mecca for you. Just like the Lord’s Cricket Ground in London or the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Eden Gardens too stands tall when it comes to famous and the most respected cricket grounds of the world.

The stadium was established during the British Raj in India around 1864. It was a common ground to play both cricket and football as the people of Bengal love their cricket and football equally. The stadium used to accommodate around 100, 000 people before the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup but to meet the standards set by the ICC to host a world cup game, the stadium went through a renovation process and thus the capacity was reduced to around 85, 000. Some even say that now a days Eden Gardens can’t even host more than 65, 000 people but the actual figure has never come out in public.

Although Eden Garden was popular among the cricketers for a very long time, but it became popular among the cricket fans worldwide only after it hosted the final of the Reliance World Cup of Cricket in 1987. Despite the host nation India was not part of the finalists, people came in large number to watch the final between Australia and England. This made a permanent mark in cricket fans hearts around the world.

The Eden Garden is always noisy and packed no matter which international cricket game is on. The noise and the knowledge of the crowd is so much that it can test any cricketer playing on the field. Probably that is why there is a say in cricket that “your education is not complete, if you have not played at the Eden Gardens.”

Some of the Best and Not So Best Moments of Eden Gardens

• 16 football fans died in a stampede at Eden Gardens during a match between East Bengal and Mohun Bagan on 16^th August, 1980.
• In a test match Kapil Dev was dropped by the then Indian captain Sunil Gavaskar and the crowd stopped the match with slogans like “No Kapil, No Test”. The crowd even abused the Indian captain.
• The crowd was heavily partisan for the Australian team during the 1987 ICC World Cup final against England as the English team had defeated the home team India in the semi-finals at Bombay, a few days earlier.
• After a sudden batting collapse, the 1996 World Cup semi-final between India and Sri Lanka was abandoned due to crowd trouble and the match was awarded to Sri Lanka.
• Kapil Dev took his ODI Hat-trick against Sri Lanka in 1991 here.
• Harbhajan Singh took a Test match Hat-trick against the Aussies here in 2000/01 series.
• VVS Laxman scored his best of 281 against Australia in 2000/01 here. He was also involved in a record-breaking partnership with Rahul Dravid without separating for an entire day.
• India made a history in the same match by winning the test even after getting follow on by the Australians.
• Sachin Tendulkar played his penultimate test match (199^th) here against West Indies from 6^th to 10^th November, 2013.

To know about other great stadiums, click here.