After renovation, Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium sports a new look.
By ANIMonday, February 21, 2011
MUMBAI - Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium, which will host the 2011 cricket World Cup final, now sports a new look after state-of-the-art renovations.
The new stadium features bucket seats for spectator comfort, lifts and staircases to facilitate movement and a plush ground that meets international standards.
The revamped infrastructure was shown to mediapersons on Sunday by the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) officials.
The President of the ICC, Sharad Pawar, and the ICC’s tournament director for the World Cup, Ratnakar Shetty, toured and inspected the stadium grounds.
“The stadium has been revamped, only at the south and the north side. The east and west have remained untouched, except for the seating arrangement. In the stadium, each and every seat is a bucket seat and therefore, when you go in for bucket seats, there is a 20 percent reduction which happens due to the erection of bucket seats. So the total capacity of the stadium has been reduced,” said Shetty.
Commenting on the reduced seating capacity of the stadium, Shetty clarified that the MCA is committed to providing quality to spectators, rather than quantity.
“We have compromised on the numbers but not on the facilities. Whether it is the food stalls or the toilet facilities, we have maintained free movement for the spectators in the aisles, and there are about 13 or 14 lifts which will be there all over the stadium, particularly in the south stand and the north stand which the senior citizens also can make use of,” said Shetty.
The large-scale repair and restoration work came days after the local administration, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), refused to grant the No Objection Certificate(NOC) for conducting cricket matches at the famous stadium, citing inadequate fire safety measures.
Wankhede Stadium is due to host three World Cup matches in all: New Zealand against Canada on March 13 and Sri Lanka on March 18; and the final on April 2.(ANI)
