Star batter Virat Kohli will be playing against South Africa at the Eden Gardens on November 5. The match coincides with Kohli’s 35th birthday. The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) is organising a grand show to mark the star batter’s birthday in Kolkata. As per reports, CAB, headed by cricket legend Sourav Ganguly’s brother, Snehasish Ganguly, will be distributing 70,000 masks of the Indian superstar among the spectators who will come to see the match.
Apart from distributing masks, the CAB has plans to have a cake-cutting ceremony before the start of the match and felicitate Kohli with a memento.
“We hope to get an approval from the ICC on this. We want to make the day special for Virat,” CAB president Snehasish Ganguly told Media.
“We want every fan in the stadium wearing Kohli masks as he walks in. We plan to distribute about 70,000 masks on that day,” he added on Monday.
The match is set to be a full house with all the tickets sold out much in advance.
“We also plan to host a fireworks show during the mid-innings interval for Virat and the crowd. It will be our way of celebrating his birthday, and our way of saying that the entire Kolkata crowd are part of the celebrations. We are sure of a full house and everyone in the stands is a Virat fan. It is a gesture on behalf of all of them,” Snehasish added.
The Eden had organised a similar event when cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar played his 199th Test in Kolkata in November 2013.
Till now, Kohli is riding on the success of his outstanding performance except the latest match against England on Sunday. He was bowled out for a zero. Kohli is the sixth-highest run-getter in this tournament, with 354 runs in six games, after South Africa’s Quinton de Kock, Australia’s David Warner, New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra, India’s Rohit Sharma, and Aiden Markram of South Africa.