Bad lights for Calicut!

A fragment of the crowd lost their temper. They hurdled on to the ground where the cops stood watching powerless. Some of them started to tussle with the organisers of the match while some others began throwing the chairs on to the ground and breaking them. These scenes are neither from an Old Firm match between Celtic and Rangers nor from a Milan derby between Internazionale and AC Milan. This was all happening at the EMS Stadium, Calicut where an ONGC I-League 2009-10 match between Viva Kerala and JCT was supposed to be taking place.

Here is how I saw the incident in my eyes on Saturday, the 16th of January. I reached the Calicut Stadium at 5:30 PM, an hour prior to the kick off. The Viva Kerala players where training under the supervision of their coach and his assistant at one side of the pitch while the visiting team from Punjab, the JCT where doing their bit on the other.

Image not recovered: SANY0023The supporters for the home team were pouring into the stadium from various parts of the state (even from the islands of Lakshadweep as I have heard!). I have been at the stadium for all the home matches of Viva till date and everything was normal till 6:15 PM before I noticed that the players where kicking the balls under the lights of a single floodlight tower. Initially I thought the organisers where cutting the costs by keeping the other lights off before the match (as it would cost them around 1.5 lakhs per game!).

But my thoughts were proven wrong when only 2 floodlight towers were functioning even at 6:30 and the match was being delayed. At 6:40 PM, it was rumoured that there was a generator failure and the concerned are working on it. The players of both teams bunged their pre match practises around 6:50 and began to lie on the grass waiting for the lights to shine.

The illumination of the 3rd tower of floodlights were welcomed the gatherers with huge cheers but everything went wrong when one of the other towers went off abruptly!

After around 1 hour of waiting without any announcements from the authorities, some 50 people from the crowd jumped the fence and into the ground and took the centre stage. Some of them grabbed a match ball and started to show their skills on the ball and a few shooting tips. More number of crowds began to intrude into the ground and started gathering around Viva Kerala players and coach making full use of some time to spent with their idols. (Thankfully, the JCT team were left alone).

At 7:20, the official announcement came that ‘the match has been postponed for the next day’ and the teams returned to their dressing rooms. The crowd who were from far distances leaving behind their jobs to watch their team were bitterly disappointed. They began to crawl into the VIP Galleries abusing the ‘irresponsible’ authorities in the most colourful terms. Several chairs and sound system were destroyed by the outbreak. Meanwhile outside the stadium, all was not well between the media and the police (there were only less than half a dozen stewards during the start of the match and were helpless).

Image not recovered: SANY0037Viva Kerala player Raman Patrick Sisupalan’s family were in the middle of the action. The player himself had to come to the help of his aged father and mother, his girlfriend and other relatives. They were seated in the Media Centre safely and were later moved out of the stadium under police protection.

The crowd moved out of the stadium around 8:20 after an hour of protests and destruction. And a match which could have gone either way has gone neither way!

Reactions:

AM Sreedharan, Viva Kerala Coach: “I am sick of football in India! This once again shows the mismanagement of the football officials. This is one of the biggest sins that can be done to the fans who have come a long way to watch their team play. This is the country’s top division and not a local tournament. Authorities must be more responsible. We cannot blame the fans for what happened!”

“I have had a similar experience at Calicut before. The stadium was packed with more than 45,000 fans and more than 4,000 outside the stadium without tickets. My team, FC Cochin, were leading 1-0 in the final of the Scissors Cup against a foreign club by an IM Vijayan goal when the lights went off in the middle of the second half. It was clearly a tactic played by the organisers to get more ticket income from the match which was postponed for next day and we lost it!”

MP Sakeer, Captain of Viva Kerala: “This is the biggest injustice done to the football fans. Even before a seven-a-side football match, the floodlights are checked at least 30 minutes before the match. It is horrible such a thing has happened in the I-League.”

Adwaidh Rajan for Footballkerala.com

From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Sunday 17 January 2010, restored from the site's 2012 database. Text as originally published.