Kolkata-Hyderabad match called off after squall hits Eden

KOLKATA: The Venue Operations Centre, a temporary structure which accommodates some police personnel on match days, collapsed as squall hit the Eden Gardens half-an-hour before Tuesday's IPL 5 match between Team Kolkata and Team Hyderabad.

Several spectators were injured with three rushed to hospital. "All three have been discharged after a thorough medical examination," a statement from the Cricket Association of Bengal said later in the night.

The match, meanwhile, was abandoned without a ball being bowled. The teams shared the two points which meant Hyderabad finally opened their account on the points table though they are still winless after six games. Kolkata are now lying second in the table.

The fans had taken shelter under the wooden structure in J Block when it fell on them in the blinding rain that lasted close to an hour and flooded much of the ground, which had been covered by large plastic sheets by then.

The structure had to be lifted and dismantled to free those trapped underneath.

The squall, which brought down the temperature in the city and suburbs, left many trees uprooted in the Maidan area, one of them damaging the nearby Mohun Bagan tent.

Ironically, the Public Works Department and the Kolkata Police who have often put CAB officials in a spot by asking them to modify or strengthen structures they thought were weak or dangerous, overlooked the vulnerability of one that was right in the path of wind-flow into the Eden and which would be manned by their own personnel.

"The PWD never objected to it, and they gave us the green light before this IPL as well," Sujan Mukherjee, one of the CAB joint secretaries, told the TOI.