IPL 2018: Lucknow’s Ekana Stadium to host few home matches for Delhi Daredevils

Lucknow’s newly built Ekana Stadium becomes the latest stadium to be added to the Indian Premier League’s ever-increasing list of host venues. Also called the Lucknow International Cricket Stadium, the venue will be hosting some of the home matches for Delhi Daredevils in the 2018 version of IPL.

Previous matches

Ekana Stadium was supposed to host the third ODI in the New Zealand Tour of India, but with the ground and other facilities not complete enough to host an international match, it was shifted to Green Park in Kanpur.

However, it has hosted day and night Duleep Trophy games in the 2017-18 domestic season; the matches were played with the new pink ball. It has also played host to home team Uttar Pradesh in Ranji Trophy against Railways with the visiting team winning by 21 runs within three days.

Why Ekana Stadium?

Compared to the usual home ground of the Delhi Daredevils – Feroz Shah Kotla, Ekana Stadium has around 9000 more seats as opposed to the Kotla, which means 9000 more tickets sold. This is one of the major factors for considering it as a second home for the Daredevils. In fact, Lucknow’s newborn stadium is now one of the largest cricket stadiums in the country with 50,000 capacity, second only to the iconic Eden Gardens, the home of Kolkata Knight Riders.

Eden Garden, which was rumoured to be seating around one lakh at one point, now seats around 66,350 spectators.

How soon will the stadium see live action?

It has been announced by the Governing Council of IPL that the League will start from April 7 and go on till May 27. The first and the final matches will be held at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. But in between that, we can definitely expect to see the new stadium with “all the world class facilities”, as told by a source to The Indian Express, host live action.

Though it was not given an opportunity to host an international match before, this might be Ekana’s chance to prove itself worthy of it.

The IPL auctions will be taking place on January 27 and 28 in Bangalore. The two teams – Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals will be participating in this year’s IPL once again, following their tow-year ban.

~ By Anwesha Nag