South African players are comfortable tackling India’s rampaging spin bowlers on low bouncing pitches after dominating the drawn Test series opener this week, but the thought of playing in front of the world’s noisiest cricket crowd is worrying them.
None of the South African players have played a match at Calcutta’s Eden Gardens, whose vocal crowd — which occasionally swells up to 100 000 — is notorious for the noise it creates throughout the match.
Several visiting captains have rated Eden Gardens as the noisiest cricket venue in the world, and players consider it a unique, but demanding experience without which no international player’s career is considered complete.
”We’ve heard about the noise that the Calcutta crowd makes. I was having a word with Sachin Tendulkar and he told me this is by far the noisiest ground in the world,” former South Africa skipper Shaun Pollock said on Friday.
”From all accounts we’ve heard, the crowd here is said to possess a lot of passion and energy, and creases plenty of noise,” Pollock said as the South Africans prepared for the second and final Test match starting on Sunday.
”This certainly is the home of cricket, and we’re looking forward to the experience,” he said. ”It’s always great to play in front of huge crowds, rather than in empty grounds.”
Pollock and all-rounder Jacques Kallis are the only players in the current South African team to have played a Test match on Indian soil before the current series that began with this week’s drawn match in Kanpur, but even they haven’t featured in a match in the eastern metropolis of Calcutta.
Kallis said he had attended the opening ceremony of the 1996 World Cup at the Eden Gardens.
”I got a feel of the atmosphere here during the World Cup’s inauguration eight years ago, but playing a match in the backdrop of the Calcutta crowd will be something quite different,” Kallis said.
”The noise here isn’t something you experience every day in your life,” he added.
Pollock said the South African team wasn’t worried about the noise, but it would be unique sensation.
”Sometimes the noise makes it difficult for players to communicate with others in the field, and a batsmen often can’t hear the call from his batting partner,” Pollock said.
Calcutta is a special venue for South Africa. It was here in 1992 that South Africa returned to the international cricket fold after decades of banishment owing to Pretoria’s policy of racial segregation. The 1992 one-day international marked the start of a new era in South African cricket.
Four years later, the South Africans celebrated their maiden Test appearance here with a Test victory — the first of its three Test wins in five matches on Indian soil during the previous two tours.
Both Pollock and Kallis were missing from the South African team that won the 1996 Test match at Eden Gardens, while the city was on the team’s itinerary.
Pollock said the young South African players were acclimatised to the Indian conditions after the Kanpur Test match.
”After the way we played in the first match, we feel better prepared for the Calcutta Test,” he said. ”We have to put in the hard work, the guys have learnt a lot as the team has evolved.” – Sapa-AP