Former captains including Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Kapil Dev were on Friday felicitated in a grand ceremony following day one of the historic day-night Test between India and Bangladesh.
Tendulkar, Dev, Dravid, Chandu Borde and current head coach Ravi Shastri were among the ones felicitated. Earlier in the day, they lauded the work done by BCCI president and former captain Sourav Ganguly to make day-night Test a reality in India.
Board of Control for Cricket for India's (BCCI) official handle tweeted the video of cricketers taking a lap of honour and captioned the post as: "A galaxy of Indian stars both present and former greats take a lap of the Eden Gardens on this historic moment of India's first-ever #PinkBallTest #INDvBAN #TeamIndia".
"If you get these kind of numbers coming into the game, there is definitely a future (for day-night Tests). It is great to see tat. Incredible atmosphere. This is something we were use to when we started out in Test cricket," said Dravid, referring to the packed Eden Gardens.
The Cricket Association of Bengal had also invited Bangladesh players who were part of their team's first Test back in 2000, which too was played against India.
Before the start of the match, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamta Banerjee and Tendulkar greeted India and Bangladesh players.
The players present from the neighbouring country included their first Test captain Naimur Rahman, Mohammed Mahmudul Hasan, Maharab Hossain, Mohammed Hasibul Hussain, Shahriar Hossain Biddut, Kazi Habibul Bashar and Mohammed Akram Khan.
Former Indian cricketers in attendance also included Sadagopan Ramesh, Saba Karim, Sunil Joshi, Ajit Agarkar, Venkatesh Prasad, Dilip Vengsarkar, Mohammed Azharuddin, K Srikkanth and Farokh Engineer.
After being reluctant for four years, India finally embraced the Day/Night format for Test cricket, following a strong push from Ganguly.
The cricketers also took a round of the iconic venue on a golf cart.
