After the long wait of 28 years ,the capital Lucknow is all ready to host a test match. After the World T20 2021, India will play a a test match against the New Zealand team at the Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee ekana International Stadium. After the indications given by BCCI, director for sports in the ekana stadium, Uday Sinha left for Delhi to attend the high level meeting for the preparation.
BCCI consider ekana Stadium as the biggest Centre for sports and now has been promoting the stadium. In 2018 ,ekana Stadium hosted a T20 series between India and West Indies. And this year in 2021 the stadium hosted the T20 and the ODI series between Indian women and the South African women.
The higher officials of the BCCI indicated that the Newzealand team will travel to India for a two match test series after the T20 world cup in November. The New Zealand team will also play a series of 3 T20 matches. The first test will be played at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and the other match will be played in the capital Lucknow. Earlier this year, BCCI secretary Jay Shah did a inspection of the ekana stadium.
Jay Shah regarded it as the world class stadium. It has all the facilities and as a good parking space. It has the seating capacity of 50000. It is near from the airport and has many hotels as well.
The ekana stadium management were expecting to get the T20 match between India and Newzealand but fortunately they got the opprtunity to host the test match.
BCCI official said ,“The stadium has good facilities and a capacity of nearly 70,000. That’s a good deal for any IPL franchise. Like Ahmedabad, it’s important to give Lucknow exposure to marquee international matches before the IPL teams are finalized. Lucknow was also shortlisted as a venue for the T20 World Cup had it happened in India.”
When Lucknow hosted a test match
1952 : India Vs Pakistan, Navda stadium
1994 : India Vs Sri Lanka, KD Singh Babu Stadium