Motera Stadium: Top 10 Things To Know About The World's Largest Cricket Venue

US President Donald Trump is scheduled to address the' Namaste Trump ' event together with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the newly renovated Sardar Patel Stadium, popularly known as Motera Stadium, in Ahmedabad on February 24, 2020, during his maiden visit to India.

Ever since Trump's city visit was announced, the local police, as well as the authorities, had confirmed the mega-gathering in the stadium of over one lakh people. The highways were adorned with beautiful flowers, walls painted, narrow lanes extended and some roads resurfaced to welcome Trump.

The venue is situated in Gujarat state, in Ahmedabad city. Before being demolished in 2016, it was a regular venue for Test and limited-over cricket to build a new stadium with greater seating capacity and modern facilities. The Motera stadium was reconstructed at an estimated cost of Rs. 8 Billon

Here are the top 10 things to know

1) The Stadium will be the world's largest cricket stadium with a seating capacity of 110,000 and the second largest stadium in the World. In Pyongyang, North Korea, the Rungrado May Day Stadium is the largest stadium in the world with a seating capacity of 114,000.

2) The stadium came into existence after the Gujarat government donated 100 acres of land on the banks of the Sabarmati river in 1982. The construction work was completed within nine months.

3) The new Motera Stadium is spread across 63 acres and has three entry points. It has 76 corporate boxes with a seating capacity of 25 each.

4) It also has an Olympic-size swimming pool and four dressing rooms. The new Sardar Patel Stadium will have LED lights installed on the roof instead of floodlights.

5) Consulting and engineering firm Walter P Moore has designed the roofing at Motera Stadium. Teflon-coated woven fibreglass PTFE, or polytetrafluoroethylene, was stretched across a circumferential inner tension ring and an outer compression ring. Those rings float through radial cable spokes between the bowl and the roof to allow movement in seismic activity.

6) The Motera stadium hosted its first ODI (One-Day International) match between India and Australia in 1984-85, which India lost. It was one of the venues for the ICC Champions Trophy 2006 edition, and hosted five of the fifteen games. Yes, Motera Stadium has always been a venue so far, since India hosted an ICC World Cup. In World Cup 2011, India defeated Australia in the quarterfinals here and went on to become the champions after defeating Pakistan in the semi-final and Sri Lanka in the grand finale.

7) Legendary cricketer Sunil Gavaskar scored 10,000 runs in Tests in 1986–87 against Pakistan while Kapil Dev surpassed Sir Richard Hadlee's 431 wickets record in Tests and became top wicket-taker in Test cricket at that time at this venue.

8) In October 1999, cricket god Sachin Tendulkar scored his first double-hundred test in a game at this venue against New Zealand as he became the first ever cricketer to score 18,000 runs in one-day cricket in a game against Australia during the 2011 Cricket World Cup.

9) Sourav Ganguly's 144 in 152 balls (8 fours and 6 sixes) during India vs Zimbabwe match on December 5th, 2000, is the highest individual score on this ground.

10) The Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) has provisionally awarded the green building rating from IGBC (Gold) to Motera Stadium. After evaluation the award was given based on parameters such as sustainable development, energy consumption, and resource conservation.

11) However, on February 21, 2020, the Gujarat Cricket Association (GCA) clarified that the' Namaste Trump ' event is being held here o n Monday at the newly built cricket stadium only to host the U.S. President Donald Trump and that won't mark the complex's inauguration.