Eden Gardens (Kolkata) Pitch Report, Results & Stats

Eden Gardens – Kolkata

The Eden Gardens is India’s oldest cricket stadium and has been the stage for some of the greatest cricketing action ever produced on the world stage. Located in the eastern city of Kolkata, which serves as the capital of West Bengal, It was established in 1864 and had a capacity of more than 100,000 at one point. The stadium owes its existence to Britishers’ love for the sport and their desire to have a place to play that sport in their colony. While the exact reason for naming it Eden Gardens is not known, it’s believed that the stadium is named so after the Eden Family, the family of the Lord of Auckland. Since hosting its first international fixture in 1934, the stadium has gone on to become the stadium that has hosted the most number of matches. The stadium will always be remembered in Indian cricket history for staging the 2nd Test of the 2001 Border Gavaskar Trophy where the Indian team eked out a win despite following on after the first innings. It also hosted the final of the 1987 Reliance World Cup and the final of the 2016 World T20. In 2019, the stadium became the first in the country to host a Pink-ball Test when India hosted Bangladesh.

Apart from serving as the home ground of the Bengal team in domestic cricket, the stadium is also the base of the Indian T20 League’s Kolkata team which has won the league twice.

The Nature of the Pitch
The pitch at Eden Gardens has always been friendly to the batters. However, in the Indian T20 League, the Kolkata pitch has become synonymous with aiding the spinners of the team. Over the years, the team structure has been influenced by the nature of the pitch and spinners like Sunil Narine, Piyush Chawla and Varun Chakravarthy have enjoyed much success. The pitch does offer a fair amount of turn and bounce to the spinners. In the Indian T20 League since 2018, captains have opted to bowl first in all matches and teams chasing have had the edge. The average first innings score in T20s at this venue is around 170 while the average first innings winning score has been in the mid 180s in T20 since 2018.

General Information about the Stadium
The stadium is owned by the Indian Army as the area where it is situated comes under the jurisdiction of the Army. It was leased out to the Cricket Association of Bengal by the Eastern Command of the Indian Army. The army connection of the ground can be seen in several stands being named after Indian Army martyrs along with former cricketers and cricket administrators. Due to renovation work not being completed on time, the stadium did not get to host any match involving India in the 2011 World Cup hosted by India and its neighbors. The two ends are called High Court End and Pavilion End. The capacity of the stadium was increased from around 40,000 to 100,000 before the 1987 World Cup but recent renovations have once again brought it down to about 60,000. Similar to Lord’s, a bell was added to the stadium in 2016 to ring in the start of day’s play for Test matches and start of match for ODI & T20I matches

History
The stadium is considered the Mecca of Indian Cricket and used to be the world’s biggest stadium after Australia’s Melbourne Cricket Ground before the renovation resulted in the capacity being reduced to 60,000. The stadium was the first to get a chance to host a World Cup final outside of Lord’s, which hosted the finals of the first three World Cups. Although it’s primarily known for cricket, until 1984 it also used to host football matches. The crowd is known to be passionate and on multiple occasions, the crowd has become riotous, the most infamous moment coming in the 1996 World Cup when they started burning down the stands in response to India’s dramatic collapse in the semi-final against Sri Lanka. The match had to be called off and Sri Lanka were adjudged winners.

Trivia
Among all the grounds in India, the Eden Gardens has hosted the most number of Test matches, ahead of Chennai’s MA Chidambaram and Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium.
The highest ODI score by any batsman was made on this ground. Rohit Sharma smashed 264 against Sri Lanka in November, 2014.
Harbhajan Singh became the first Indian to pick a Test hattrick when he achieved this feat against the visiting Aussies in 2001.
Former India captain Kapil Dev also took a hat-trick at the ground in a 1991 ODI against Sri Lanka and Kuldeep Yadav repeated the feat in an ODI against the Aussies in 2017.