IPL 2019: KKR batsman Nitish Rana blames floodlight issue at the Eden for his dismissal

Knight Riders’ opening IPL fixture against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Sunday was halted for 12 minutes after one of the floodlights tripped due to a short circuit and home side batsman Nitish Rana blamed his dismissal on the power outage. The incident happened at 7.18 pm when Sunrisers’ Rashid Khan was about to bowl his third delivery of the 16th over to Nitish Rana who was batting on 68 then.

The game was in the SRH’s favour at that point in time. Rana and Andre Russell were batting in the middle and the required run-rate was increasing with every ball. The southpaw was batting well before the play stopped and was dismissed off the very first delivery on resumption.

“I didn’t know this could happen. My gameplan suddenly got interrupted. I lost my momentum when I came to the dressing room. The atmosphere also became a bit relaxed. I got into the shell because of the break. I could have finished the match if the break was not there,” Nitish Rana said at the post-match press conference after KKR’s six-wicket win.

Reason for power failure

Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) joint-secretary Avishek Dalmiya termed the incident an “eventuality”. “It’s not a glitch actually. It was an eventuality which got rectified,” Dalmiya was quoted as saying by India Today. According to an official statement from the agency that controls the operation of the match, a short circuit happened in the E-Block Tower. 

“There are 131 contactors in E-Block Tower for switching on 131 M Halide Lamps. Unfortunately, contactor bearing No. 1-8 of Phase RB-1 got short-circuited due to chance cause, which tripped the MCB system resulting in tripping of few lamps. The matter was identified and corrective action was taken immediately thereby the system came back to normalcy,” the statement read.

Eden Gardens had several instances of power failure in the past with the last being during a match between New Zealand and Bangladesh in the World Twenty20 in 2016. The fourth ODI between India and Sri Lanka on December 24, 2009 was also halted due to power failure, causing a delay by 23 minutes. Power failure had also happened during an IPL match in 2008 between Deccan Chargers and KKR.

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