In Ahmedabad, everyone remembers only success stories. The pan and tea shop vendors that surround the cavernous Narendra Modi Stadium, like the bogies of a train, still recollect the name of “Krishna bhai” aka Mrugesh Jaikrishna, a businessman and BCCI vice-president that conceived the idea of building a cricket stadium in the city. A snub during a board meeting acted as a trigger, and he converted ravine land to a charming stadium with green walls like most of Motera’s dwellings in merely nine months. Everyone talks as though they know him in person, as though he is one of their own.
The genesis of the stadium has various local versions, narrated with flourishes and exaggerations. But everyone listens, quietly sipping their adrak chai. The Donald Trump visit, six years ago, is the new staple story they like to thrust on unsuspecting visitors. The shops in the locality were shuttered down, a slum behind the stadium was evicted, yet they talk about the day in graphic detail. “Kya mahaul tha bhai!” (what an atmosphere) says Dhruv Patel, who claims he whips up the best pav bhaji in town, and whose fans include former cricketer Harbhajan Singh. Patel adds: “America loves India, Trump said that.”
He believes that too.
The locals in the vicinity remember the stadium, in its latest avatar, for Trump’s visit and not India’s heartbreaking defeat in the 2023 ODI World Cup final. They don’t dwell on failures. References are carefully avoided as they hope for another success story that could be the start of many more. Once a self-effacing, even nondescript city relentlessly churning out businessmen and entrepreneurs, Ahmedabad’s vaulting ambition to become a sporting powerhouse of the world, like London and Los Angeles, Barcelona and Moscow begins from the Narendra Modi Stadium. Much like how the state, which juts out like an elbow into the Arabian Sea. dominated world trade from its 1,600-plus kilometer coastline.
The Narendra Modi Stadium has displaced Wankhede and Eden Gardens as the stage of the biggest cricket matches in the country. Four years later, it will host the Commonwealth Games. In 2036, the finest athletes of the world could descend here for the Olympics. Roughly Rs 5,000 crore are being earmarked for building infrastructure and stadiums. Land has been acquired in the suburbs, according to reports. The most striking is the Veer Savarkar Sports Complex in Naranpura, constructed at the cost of Rs 820 crores. Spread over 21 acres inside the city, its rapid pace of construction astounded the locals. It claims to be the largest sports complex in the country. The Amdavadis fetishise the “largest, biggest and best”. The Modi stadium is touted as the largest cricket stadium in terms of its capacity; inside the Savarkar complex, a plaque claims “India’s Cleanest City, Amdavad”.
For the Olympic push, Home Minister Amit Shah recently said that 10 new stadiums will be built. The sports complex at the Narendra Modi Stadium would be expanded and refurbished to global standards. Faces of sportsmen are painted on the wall of bridges, pickle-ball courts have sprouted on the Sabarmati Riverfront. According to the eminent Gandhi scholar Ramachandra Guha, Mahatma Gandhi disregarded not only cricket but also sport itself. “Our colonial-born Indians are carried away with this football and cricket mania,” he once wrote in a letter, which Guha reproduces in a piece for Wisden Almanack. He would have been appalled by the sporting skyscrapers popping up on the banks of Sabarmati.
But infrastructure alone wouldn’t give a sporting identity to a city. It needs timeless moments. If India beat New Zealand to hoist the title, it could be one of the moments that sits along the city’s makeover from the country’s business capital to its sporting capital. Like the old Motera Stadium, it would be a fountain of pleasant memories. It was originally named Sardar Vallabhai Patel, but like fond monikers, “Motera” clung on.
Kapil and Sunny show
It was not the most modern or iconic stadium. The setting was so rural that herds of goats could wander in. When there was no cricket, the locals, according to Dhruv, would sometimes sleep under the shade of the giant trees in the perimeter. It was here that Sunil Gavaskar, who was also part of the advisory board set up by Mrugesh, completed 10,000 Test runs, with a delectable late cut. To celebrate the occasion, Kapil Dev managed to uncork a champagne bottle in the dry state. Later, Kapil ended his long pursuit of becoming the highest wicket-taker in Tests. Exactly 432 balloons soared on the humid October day. Doordarshan celebrated the moment by playing a song in Kapil’s tribute – “Haqeeqat hai ye khwab nahin / Kapil Dev ka jawaab nahin.”
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Lens of history snapped away — Javagal Srinath conjured a reverse-swinging masterclass, Rahul Dravid completed his 11,000th Test run, and India dethroned Australia in the 2011 World Cup en route to the title march.
The Modi stadium and Motera are the same yet different. Motera was humble; Modi stadium is ostentatious. Both were replete with political symbolism though. It was claimed that Mrugesh got the land due to his proximity with Madhavsinh Solanki, the then Chief Minister. He denied the allegation to this newspaper. “If I was considered so close to the CM, then the land should have been free. Or at least, at a prime location as stadiums are in Mumbai, opposite Marine Drive, and in Bangalore, on MG Road in the city centre,” he would say. The stadium would be at the heart of several political intrigues in years to come.
Later, Narendra Modi, when he was Gujarat’s CM, became Gujarat Cricket Association’s president. Later, Home Minister Amit Shah succeeded him. Both are the foremost political figures in the country.
The Modi stadium would go on to host the most important cricketing contests in India.
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Now, the sprawling arena needs a defining moment. A memory the audience could cling to. To breathe life into concrete and gravel. For in Ahmedabad, every one remembers only a success story.
