The Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) of India will construct the world’s largest cricket stadium at Motera at a cost of 700 crore, the foundation stone for which was laid on Monday. The new stadium, expected to be completed in two years, will have a seating capacity of 1.10 lakh spectators. Currently, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia, is the world’s largest cricket stadium with a capacity of one lakh. The foundation stone for the mammoth stadium was laid by Parimal Nathwani, Vice President of GCA and Group President, Reliance Industries Ltd. Nathwani is also a Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand. Construction contract“With the arrival of heavy duty construction equipment, the Motera site now looks like a mega project site,” said Nathwani. Design and engineering firm STUP Consultant Pvt Ltd is the project management consultant, while architectural company Populus will be the architect and designer of the new Motera Stadium. Populus also designed the Melbourne Cricket Stadium. Larsen and Toubro will be the principal contractor. Nathwani said that the new cricket stadium, which replaces the old one at the same site, will be spread over approximately 63 acres of land. The old stadium was razed to the ground recently. Amenities“There will be a concourse to connect the entire stadium for pedestrian and vehicular movement. Moreover, the new club house will be equipped with 50-55 rooms and an Olympic-size swimming pool,” he said. There will also be 76 corporate boxes. The new stadium will have three practice grounds for cricketers as well as an indoor cricket academy for providing coaching to the budding cricketers. The GCA management has also taken care of parking and traffic issues in designing the new cricket ground. “The parking area will accommodate around 3,000 cars and 10,000 two wheelers. In the past, the whole traffic load was only on one main road from Motera to Sabarmati. In the new stadium, the traffic will be segregated in three directions.” JP chief Amit Shah had succeeded Narendra Modi as the President of GCA, when the latter resigned in May 2014 after the last Lok Sabha polls. Source: The Hindu