Kolkata’s love for sports is world famous. Kolkata always shows unconditional love and support to sports stars no matter what. The Kolkata fan base is part of folklore now. Sprots stars love to play in front of a massive crowd amidst the biggest cheer. When it comes to cricket, Eden Gardens has been one of the famous venues worldwide. Cricketers cannot wait to play in front of the Eden crowd and Eden always supports its heroes. They don’t care about form; the class matters to Eden crowd in Kolkata. They never forget to make it memorable for the heroes who have served the game. When Eden crowd decided to don the yellow jersey of Chennai Super Kings instead of supporting the home team, Kolkata Knight Riders, it surprised a few. But people who know Kolkata, must remember that this was not happening for the first time.
In the IPL match between KKR and CSK, on April 23, 2023, Eden kept chanting for Dhoni. To some, this was all due to the absence of Bengal representation in the franchise. But KKR has been without a Bengal cricketer since long. Nothing has changed drastically to make the audience suddenly cheer for the opposition. This was nothing but unaltered love and respect for MS Dhoni. The CSK captain was visiting Eden after years and this could be his last visit to Kolkata to play cricket. Last year was speculated to be Dhoni’s last IPL season. Fortunately, that did not happen and after almost three years when Dhoni returned to Eden Gardens, Eden could not stop showing homage to the legend fearing this could be actually his last in IPL.
And this was not the first time that Eden crowd chose to follow an icon, an idol instead of the home team. On November 25, 2005 in an ODI between India and South Africa, Eden supported the visitors throughout. Rahul Dravid who was leading the Indian team was jeered by the fans. It was a tough pill to swallow but Eden back then went against the Indian cricket team as Sourav Ganguly was missing from the team. There was no usual warmth for Dravid-led Indian side. Instead, the crowd stood by the son of the soil and backed Ganguly saying, “No Sourav, No Cricket”. The atmosphere was bizarre, unsettled, unbelievable. But this happened.
This also happened when Ganguly was axed from the KKR team. But what happened in 2005 stunned the cricket world.
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