Ahmedabad's Narendra Modi Stadium is set to host the mega fixture between India and Pakistan in the upcoming ICC ODI World Cup scheduled for October-November of 2023. India Pakistan match is going to be one of the biggest clashes in the upcoming World Cup 2023. This will be the first India Pakistan match on Indian soil since 2016 when the two teams faced off at Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Sunday.
Reports from a leading English news daily suggest that the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has zeroed in on the Ahmedabad-based stadium in order to accommodate the many fans who will be expected to travel to India from abroad for the fixture.
The Narendra Modi Stadium is the largest cricket stadium in the world with a seating capacity of 1,32,000.
The BCCI will announce the schedule for the mega event, which was last hosted in India in 2011, which was also the second time that the country sealed the ODI World Cup trophy. The reports add that the same will be done with a grand launch once the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 season ends.
The slated start date for the ODI World Cup is October 5, with Nagpur, Bengaluru, Trivandrum, Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Rajkot, Indore, Bengaluru and Dharamshala being short-listed as venues even for practice fixtures.
Meanwhile, Pakistan could play most of their matches in Chennai and Bengaluru for security reasons. Another option is the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. Bangladesh could also play most of their matches in Kolkata and Guwahati to shorten the travelling for the away fans.
The reports also mention that Team India has requested the BCCI to have the fixtures of teams like Australia, England, New Zealand and South Africa in venues that aid spinners. It told the board that it prefers slow pitches as it wants to maximise the so-called home advantage, a trend it has been following over the past few years.
“The Indian team has performed well on slow tracks in the past few years at home. So the team management had requested that whenever the schedule is being prepared the Indian team should face top teams on slow pitches. They wanted to have a home advantage,” a source in the BCCI said.
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