New Delhi: The Gujarat Cricket Association has decided to demolish the present cricket stadium at Motera and build a new stadium in its place. It will take around two years for the new stadium to come into existence. After the reconstruction and make-over, the Sardar Patel Cricket Stadium here would be the biggest cricket stadium in the world in terms of seating capacity.
The new stadium will have a seating capacity of 1, 00,000 people. Presently, the stadium consisting of six pavilions has a capacity of 54,000, which was not enough in view of the rush of cricket fans during the matches, GCA said.
The demolishing of the structure began on September 10 and it is likely to take four months to completely knock down the arena.
Before, the new stadium comes into existence let's take a look at some of the facts of the historic Motera stadium in Ahemdabad, which is going to become India's largest cricketing ground.
1. The stadium, built on 50 acres of land on the banks of the Sabarmati river, has hosted 12 Tests and 24 ODIs between 1983 and 2014.
2. The venue witnessed historic moment of Sunil Gavaskar becoming the first-ever batsman to score 10,000 Test runs in 1987.
3. The venue also saw Kapil Dev breaking Richard Hadlee's then world record of 431 Test wickets in 1994.
4. The Sardar Patel Stadium hosted the second quarter-final of the 2011 World Cup, where India beat Australia by five wickets.
5. In India, only Eden Gardens (25 ODI matches) and M. Chinnaswamy Stadium (23 ODI matches) have hosted more ODI matches than Motera.
6. The higest individual score in Motera was made by Sourav Ganguly( 144 runs) against Zimbabwe on December 05, 2000 . His innings helped India beat Zimbabwe by 61 runs.
7. The best bowling performance in the Motera was done by the Aussie speedster Mitchell Johnson who took four wickets by giving away just 19 runs against Zimbabwe on February 21, 2011. Australia beat Zimbabwe by 91 runs.
8. The highest innings score in ODI was made by South Africa who put 365/2 by on February 27, 2010 against India. South Africa beat India by 90 runs in that match.
9. The first match on the stadium was played on October 05, 1984 in which Australia beat India by 7 wickets while the last match was played on December 05, 2011 where West Indies beat India by 16 runs.
10. The most successful bowler at this venue was Kapil Dev who took a total of 10 wickets in ODIs.Sachin Tendulkar scored his first double century in Test cricket on this ground.
