By Admin 
Barabati Stadium in Cuttack, Odisha is ready for the India-South Africa T20 match. There is a village just 40 kilometers away from this stadium where cricket is still ‘taboo’. Nuagadh village of Jagatsinghpur district was once considered the stronghold of cricket. In the same village, for the last 21 years, he is afraid of even touching the bat and ball. The reason is that dark afternoon of March 1, 2004, which snatched away the entire cricket team from the entire village.
The tragic incident of 2004 that changed the village
13 young players of Nuagadh, Utkalmani Cricket Club team, were going to Mahakalapara to play in the final of the local tournament. The road was full of water. The boat capsized at Bahkuda Ghat of Mahanadi, and all the 13 players drowned in the river. After this heart-wrenching incident, the village took a collective decision that cricket will no longer be played here. No matches, no tournaments, no celebrations… just silence in the name of sports.
Pain was handled by making a memorial
Three years after the incident, in 2007, the villagers came together to build a memorial. A tower with the names of all 13 players engraved on it. This tower stands in the middle of the village, as if reminding every day what cricket has taken away from them.
pain of widows
The most pain is in those homes from where young sons and men left together. Biswajit Ray’s wife, Rosalini, still cannot forget that day. She said, “Only a few months had passed since my marriage. My husband was both a batsman and a bowler. He loved cricket so much that it took his life.”