Virat Kohli rings bell at Eden Garden, Kolkata crowd goes into a frenzy

A new tradition Prince of Kolkata, Sourav Ganguly, brought into the grounds of Eden Gardens after being elected as the CAB President, is the introduction of bell ringing custom prior to the start of a match. It is a tradition followed at the Home of Cricket, Lord’s, before the start of any Test match on a given Thursday.

It started off at the Mecca of Indian Cricket in the India-New Zealand series. Stars such as Michael Clarke, Sachin Tendulkar and many more have indulged into the custom. The 70,000 cricket fans gathered yesterday at Eden Gardens were split into orange of the Royal Challengers and purple of the Kolkata Knight Riders.

The last time people witnessed such anomaly at Eden Gardens with KKR supporters in minority was when Saurav Ganguly was sacked as the KKR captain and was, later on, bought back by the Pune Warriors India. The entire stadium was colored blue supporting Dada and displaying their anguish towards the KKR management.

However, after witnessing the Sachinesque chants from the majority of oranges in the crowd for Virat Kohli, Ganguly obliged to assign the honour of ringing the bell to the man at the last minute, looking at his popularity amongst the masses.

As soon as the crowd witnessed the man ringing the bell, the entire Kohli-crazy crowd went into a frenzy as the chants of Kohli..Kohli.. reverberated through Esplanade to Howrah, all across the Maidan and into the TV sets all across the globe.

The last time such incidence occurred was with the crowd cheering a name of the player repeatedly on this ground was when the Little Master walked in to bat.

Ahead of yesterday’s KKR v RCB game, fans witnessed a rare scenario at the Eden Gardens. Cricket Association of Bengal, which usually invites celebrities, was almost forced to call the visiting team skipper Virat Kohli at the last moment to ring the bell.

Reacting to this incident, a senior CAB official said as per oneindia.com, “It was a rare incident.” The visiting team captains in the ongoing cash-rich league have not generally been invited to ring the bell. But only due to the tremendous popularity of Kohli, he rang the bell.

However, the crowd was treated to an anti-climax, after Kohli got out scoring a golden duck. The entire stadium fell into graveyard-like hush seeing the back of Kohli, much like when Sachin Tendulkar got out for a golden duck while receiving a screaming yorker from Shoaib Akhtar way back in 1999.

RCB fell down like a pack of cards registering the lowest total ever in an IPL. KKR went on to win the match by 82 runs.