This habit of building unnecessary stadiums to prove a bureaucratic point or following splits in sports bodies is an old Indian habit
On May 29, the much-hyped playoffs of IPL 2025 were played at a stadium in the suburbs of Chandigarh in a place called Mullanpur. Four matches of the Punjab Kings (PBKS) were played here, a year after it was opened. It is the second cricket stadium in the town of Chandigarh. The stadium is named after Maharaja Yadavindra Singh, after the son of the Maharaja of Patiala Bhupendrasingh Rajendra Singh, who donated the Ranji Trophy named after another prince Ranjitsinhji, according to EspnCricinfo. But for popular convenience, it is called the Mullanpur stadium.
This stadium is a totally unnecessary artefact that the builders hope will be like another diamond in the necklace surrounding Chandigarh. And give it a royal name, and the necklace metaphor will be complete, especially with this new stadium linked directly to three maharajas. The stadium is a total waste because about 40 km away is another cricket stadium with a similar capacity, built by the former bureaucrat IS Bindra, after whom it is named. It was the only diamond, but now there are two. The more new diamonds that are attached to the neck of a city results in one thing, the earlier one gets dumped, forgotten, and faded.
2 stadiums in Mumbai
This habit of building unnecessary stadiums to prove a bureaucratic point or following splits in sports bodies is an old Indian habit. In Mumbai, we have two cricket stadiums next to each other in prime land: The Wankhede Stadium (named after a politician and cricket bureaucrat) next to the Brabourne Stadium. It was built as a result of cricket association politics. Brabourne Stadium, like an ageing aristocratic lady, has been forgotten and dumped. The same fate awaits the Bindra Stadium in Mohali.
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In the suburbs of Mumbai in Navi Mumbai near Thane, another stadium, part of an educational institution, was built about 10 years ago, called the DY Patil Stadium, named after the founder of the local engineering college. Many IPL games and a few women's international matches were held there. As if all this is not enough in the crowded and overflowing city where the poor still live in drainage pipes on the side of big roads, another mega stadium has been announced in the same area. It will also be in 50 acres of land in Amane, 25 km off Thane. It will have a capacity to house one lakh spectators. This is, of course, intended to rival the one lakh capacity Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, built with aid from Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, after whom two bowling ends were named initially (now, Adani Pavilion End, Jio End).
All the places that are planning cricket stadiums already have existing stadiums. One needn’t go far to find the reason for these cricket stadiums. For sure, it is economically viable, especially if an IPL club hires it for the entire season and one or two international stadiums are allotted to it by the BCCI. But the main reason is that it is a land-grabbing racket in the name of cricket and the long-existing dream of making India into a sporting power. Once the stadium is built the row of shops and offices which are up for rent are taken over by some of the big sports officials directly or indirectly as it happened in the case of the tennis stadium in government land in Delhi which the chieftain RK Khanna not only named after himself but made it his own. He bravely fought all government attempts to reclaim it. Now it seems that his name has been wiped off the stadium boards.
Crooked way to take land away
Another reason is that the land would have been marked for something else, maybe for a housing for the poor, a government school or college, or a hospital. For the elite classes living in the centre of any city, the idea of precious land going to the underclasses is a terrible waste and an emphatic No. Also, it is an easy but crooked way to take land away from poor farmers. The Mullanpur stadium was also 50 acres of farms and all around it. “Acres of wheat gleam in the afternoon sun, ripe for harvest during Baisakhi, which is a festival celebrated in Punjab in mid-April,” according to Cricinfo. But we, as a country, have long given up the stirring sight of gleaming wheat stalks. We much prefer a gleaming new cricket ball, white or shining red, being hit for sixes. Because that sight is among the few in the crumbling and overflowing metropolises that will stir this nation.
Also, to grab land from the poor in the name of highways, smart cities and stadiums is an accepted way in India. The idea is that the farmers deprived of their land and their profession and any ability to survive, will be content watching the gleaming cars whiz by or the new big planes take off, which is an accepted notion. Like in the new airport in Jewar in the Delhi neighbourhood, which took away hectares of farmland from poor famers, even though there was no need for another airport near Delhi, about 60 km from the existing mega airport.
Example of Paris Olympics venues
In fact, the new technology evident in the 2024 Paris Olympics was to build a temporary stadium from where the spectator stands can be removed and the land returned as public space. None of that will be accepted here, because the land is the name of the game. Cricket is just the front office.
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In the cities of the US, too, the situation is the same. An op-ed in the New York Times of May 28 says: “Our stadiums are monuments to the poverty of our civic ambitions and our inability to summon the collective will to use the land we have for the things we need. They are distractions from our inability to build anything else.” This refers to a new stadium being built in Washington, where there has never been a suitable alternative.
As if all these cricket stadiums were not enough, Gujarat, where the social indices are among the poorest in India, is planning a string of stadiums, which of course will be named after retired bureaucrats and politicians for the Olympic dream of 2036. Here, too, the aim is not to develop sports, for there is no big government plan for it. Instead, a stadium is an easy way to grab that slice of immortal edifice and stick it to your name.
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The government hospital and school, the farm lands can all wait till the sun rises over the New India and huge aircraft come to land where once the wheat stalks gleamed in the morning sun. And of course, sixes are hit “out of the park” as former cricketer Ravi Shastri often says.
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