After all hypes and hullaballoo regarding India’s first Day-Night Test, the D-Day has finally arrived and the Eden Gardens is all decked up to host the historic encounter between India and Bangladesh.

Virat Kohli & boys have, for long, been reluctant to play a test match with the ball, but with Sourav Ganguly’s advent as the BCCI president the tides turned and India and Bangladesh, the only two Test-playing nations to have not tried their luck in cricket’s latest adventure, agreed to play the second Test of the two-match series.

Match Details: Toss, start, session timings

Considering the disturbing presence of dew in Kolkata during this time of the year, timings were revised and each day’s play will start at 1 PM and stumps will be drawn at 8 PM. The toss, accordingly, will be done 30 minutes before the start.

The sessions have also been altered to negate the dew factor at maximum. While in a conventional Day-Night Test, the first break is called the Tea Break followed by 40-minute Supper break after the play of the second session.

However, in the Test between India and Bangladesh, the team will have a usual Lunch break at 3 PM and the last break will be Tea which will be taken at 5:40 PM and run for 20 minutes.

What to expect

The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) is leaving no stone unturned in their preparation to make the event a grand affair. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) president Sourav Ganguly has invited a string of dignitaries to grace the occasion.

Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina will ring the customary Eden Bell to kickstart the proceedings of the first day.

The CAB has also taken measures to felicitate all the members of the Bangladeshi team which had played their first-ever test match in 2000 against India.

Sachin Tendulkar, Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra, Tennis star Sania Mirza, Badminton World Champion PV Sindhu, Chess World Champion Viswanathan Anand and six-time Boxing World Champion MC Mary Kom will also be honoured during the occasion.

CAB secretary Avishek Dalmiya even revealed that the Bengal cricket board is planning to arrange a chat show during the lunch break with cricketers involving Ganguly, Tendulkar, VVS Laxman and Rahul Dravid.

“Other than the chat show, there would be boys playing in the background who will be HIV affected kids. After the chat show, breast cancer survivors would be given flower bouquets by the cricketers. As the colour of breast cancer awareness is pink, and we are playing the pink-ball Test, it is for that,” Dalmiya was quoted as saying to ANI.

Also, the match is expected to be played in front of a packed house as Ganguly informed that all the tickets have been sold out for the first four days.

How India prepared for it

Ever since it was announced that the second Test would be a Day-Night affair, the Indian team took it seriously and players were seen practising with pink balls even before the first Test.

India’s Test specialists Ajinkya Rahane, Cheteshwar Pujara, Mayank Agarwal, Ravindra Jadeja and Mohammed Shami practised at the National Cricket Academy (NCA) under the lights of M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru with the SG pink ball when the limited-overs team were busy playing the Twenty-20 International (T20I) series against Bangladesh.

Indian skipper Virat Kohli, who had missed the T20I series took to a practice session with the pink ball before the first Test at the Holkar Stadium in Indore. After the first Test got wrapped in less than three days, the team stayed back in Indore to prepare for the Eden test.