India vs New Zealand: Raipur gears up to be India’s 50th ODI venue | Cricket News

RAIPUR: The magnificent Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium here is all geared up to become the 50th venue in India to stage an ODI when it hosts the second game of the India-New Zealand white-ball series on Saturday. This will be the maiden international match at this stadium, which has an impressive 49,000 crowd capacity.
Inaugurated in 2008, it is the third-largest stadium in India, and the fourth largest in the world. The stadium is named after Veer Narayan Singh Binjhwar, a landlord from Sonakhan who spearheaded the 1857 war for India’s independence in Chhattisgarh.
“It’s a proud moment for us, and we are geared up for it. There’s a tremendous craze for cricket here. This can be gauged by the fact that when we opened the ticket sales for this match at a ticketing platform, all the tickets were sold within 6 hours of us doing that. Still, people are queuing up outside the stadium, hoping to get tickets. We’ve reserved around 4,000 seats for schoolchildren at a price of Rs 300 per ticket,” Mukul Tiwari, the secretary of Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh (Association), told TOI on Thursday.

“Our preparations for this match have been very good. We have a world-class stadium which can accommodate almost 50,000 spectators. The outfield is lush green and the pitch is sporting. Our aim is to bid to become one of the cities which stages one of the games of the ODI World Cup later this year, and we want to put up a grand show which will enable us to do that,” he added.
In 2013 and 2015, Raipur hosted two IPL games each, as the home venue of the Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals), and in 2014, it staged 8 games of the now-defunct CLT20. It has also been a popular venue for a series involving veteran cricketers. Staging an international game, though, puts Chhattisgarh in the new league, and the local association wants to celebrate the occasion in grand style.
“This is one of the biggest sporting events of our state. We’ll have a laser show after the match, which will showcase the culture of Chhattisgarh. We’ve invited the presidents and secretaries of all the associations in India to watch the match. Jay Shah BCCI secretary) was supposed to be here as well, but he won’t be able to make it due to personal commitments,” informed Tiwari.
Indeed, it’s a huge leap for an association which became a full member of the BCCI only in 2016. “The police department of Raipur too has been extremely supportive. We will have 1600 cops stationed at the stadium,” he concluded.