JOIN USNarendra Modi Stadium: A legacy-establishing exercise
Collective confusion and consternation impregnated the press box when talks did the rounds about an hour before the start of the third Test between India and England at a mind-boggling venue in Motera, Ahmedabad on Wednesday.
Reports suggested that the Sardar Patel stadium was going to be renamed the Narendra Modi stadium. Not implausible but it seemed too late in the day for a name change, and that too for a stadium built on the ruins of one which has stood here from 1982 to 2016 under the former name.
A few minutes later, however, Amit Shah - Union Home Minister and former president of the Gujarat Cricket Association - made it official before President Ram Nath Kovind threw it open.
As a course correction it was later announced that only the main stadium has been named after Modi while the entire Sports Enclave, including the stadium, is named after Sardar Patel.
Barely 200 kilometres from the world’s tallest statue (of freedom fighter, India’s first home minister Vallabhbhai Patel and named the ‘Statue of Unity’), the Modi stadium is yet another legacy-establishing exercise, and it does that in grandiose fashion.
With an absurd 63-acre footprint, the venue has four dressing rooms, 76 corporate boxes, a full-fledged cricket academy, an Olympic-size swimming pool, gymnasiums inside dressing rooms, six indoor pitches, two practice grounds… the list goes on and on but the most impressive figure of the lot is its seating capacity.
Speaking to host broadcasters, BCCI secretary Jay Shah claimed the enclave has facilities for 40 different sports disciplines. The massive and yet somehow aesthetic structure is capable of hosting more than 1.3 lakh spectators at a time, a number consciously targeted pre-conceptualisation to overtake the Melbourne Cricket Ground as the world’s largest stadium.
From the time you enter one of the three gates, you get a sense of just how large the stadium is. A never-ending exoskeleton, slabs of concrete bigger than most dilapidated houses in the boondocks it stands in the midst of.
Besides the fact that it is the only stadium in the country with a 360-degree view of the playing field without pillars to distract viewers, it’s the only stadium that doesn’t allow you a view of anything beyond its incomprehensible tall roof, perhaps for good reason.