Gujarat will soon have world’s largest cricket stadium: All you need to know

In a country where cricket is a religion, here’s a ‘temple’ like no other. If everything goes as planned, in a few months, India will have the world’s largest cricket stadium.

The Sardar Patel Stadium or the Motera Cricket Stadium is in the final stages of completion in Ahmedabad, Gujarat—a state which has given the Indian cricket team stars like Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravindra Jadeja. It will have a whopping spectator capacity of 1.10 lakh—higher than the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Australia, which can accommodate 1,00,024 spectators.

Sprawled across 64 acres, the stadium does not stop with the main ground. It will have two cricket grounds with small pavilion areas, indoor practice pitches, training centre and a 55-room club house, which will have an Olympic size swimming pool, badminton and tennis courts, squash arena, table tennis area and a 3D projector theatre. The complex will also have hockey and football grounds and a kabaddi area.

The idea to make a new stadium in place of the old stadium which had a capacity of about 50,000, came up months before the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, was to move to New Delhi as the prime minister. Parimal Nathwani, senior vice-president of the Gujarat Cricket Association, told THE WEEK that as president of the GCA, Modi took much interest in cricket. “When we discussed the plan with him about redoing structure at the pavilion end, he asked how old the structure was. When I said it was 25 years old, he said it would be better to build a new stadium,” he said.

Published at: https://www.theweek.in/news/sports/2019/09/16/Gujarat-will-soon-have-world-largest-cricket-stadium-All-you-need-to-know.html