A spruced-up Eden Gardens with its floodlights in full bloom along with the hustle and bustle inside the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) premises are enough indication of the iconic venue getting ready for its share of the ongoing World Cup.

The bigger question though lies elsewhere.

How many seats will be filled up on Saturday when Bangladesh take on the Netherlands? Both teams are placed in the bottom half of the standings and have fared poorly so far. The Eden has a capacity of 65,000.

The CAB, however, is optimistic of a better picture on Saturday. “We have given tickets for Saturday’s game as well as the Pakistan-Bangladesh match (on October 31) for both counters (at the Mohammedan Sporting ground) and online sales today (Wednesday).

“It’s those (priced) tickets that our affiliated clubs hadn’t taken. We decided to slot those back for sale,” a senior CAB official said.

The discontent among the association’s members has been palpable as only 3,000 (for all the five matches) tickets were reserved for them, while the percentage of complimentary tickets too has been drastically reduced. All according to the directives of the International Cricket Council.

Shakib seeks help

The Bangladesh team, after getting a thrashing from South Africa in Mumbai, landed here on Wednesday without their captain Shakib-Al Hasan. It was learnt that Shakib had gone straight to Mirpur for a short stint with his mentor Nazmul Abedeen Fahim and worked mainly on his batting.

He’s expected to be back on Friday, the eve of the game against the Dutch.