The record-buster: The Sardar Patel Stadium, Ahmedabad, will be the largest cricket venue in the world

The world’s largest cricket stadium is the legendary Melbourne Cricket Ground. In a few months, another MCG will take the crown. The Motera cricket ground in Gujarat is expected to seat 1.10 lakh people; the Melbourne stadium can hold 1,00,024.

The new stadium is expected to grab eyeballs the way the Statue of Unity, the world’s tallest statue at 182m, did early last year. The stadium, costing Rs700 crore and set over 63 acres, is in its final stages of completion.

The idea to rebuild the old Sardar Patel Stadium, which had a capacity of about 50,000, came up months before then chief minister Narendra Modi was to leave for Delhi in 2014, to start his new role. “When we discussed with him rebuilding the pavilion end, he asked us how old the structure was,” Parimal Nathwani, former senior vice president of the Gujarat Cricket Association, told THE WEEK. “When I said it was 25 years old, [Modi] said it would be better to come up with a new stadium.” When Modi was informed of the MCG’s seating capacity, he apparently told the GCA to build more seats.

The Sardar Patel Stadium has, over the years, seen many a record being broken. Be it Sunil Gavaskar becoming the first batsman to go past 10,000 Test runs or Kapil Dev overtaking Richard Hadlee with his 432nd scalp.

Published at: https://www.theweek.in/theweek/sports/2019/10/25/the-record-buster.html