Sports Desk:

Let’s face it. It seems like two sides of the coin where one seems happy to live in the past while the other prepares to embrace the future.

In Gwalior, cricket seemed to have stopped since the Sachin Tendulkar double hundred against South Africa in an ODI at the Captain Roop Singh International Stadium in 2010.

It was a historical moment in cricket history considering it was the first double hundred in ODIs but the city did not have the opportunity to witness any further history considering the fact that there was no international cricket played in this part of the country.

It did not take long for the CRSIS to be ousted from the landscape of Indian cricket and as things stand, it can only be remembered now for that famous double hundred of their cricketing God.

“The part of the scoreboard is blown away by the wind,” Sunil Gupta, the scorer of the match, told reporters at the CRSIS on Thursday that eventually symbolises the state of affairs prevailing in the venue.

BCCI’s rule of having a self-owned stadium is known to be the major reason for the Madhya Pradesh Cricket Association to build a new stadium as the former one was owned by Gwalior Municipality.

Sunil dived into his memory lane when his attention was drawn regarding the famous double hundred of Sachin before adding that late Srimant Madhav Rao Scindia, who is known to be the father of the city, used to come here and play cricket.

“He ( Madhav Rao) used to play cricket here and that was one of the reasons cricket was played here in this field earlier. Later everything changed and as a result, cricket was shifted to the new stadium,” he said.

The new stadium, which is still having its final touch, came up with a design that suits the requirement of international cricket, named after Madhav Rao, waiting to experience the thrill of international cricket.

“We could have hosted international cricket earlier but there were problems due to Covid that stopped all the activities surrounding the stadium while earlier it was also stopped as there were some other problems,” said an official involved with the development.

“We had the Madhya Pradesh Premier League last week and it was full house. And now after the game against Bangladesh, we hope to host international cricket regularly here,” he said.

History cannot be kept away when a game is played in Gwalior whether you take the double hundred of Sachin Tendulkar or the upcoming series opener on Sunday as it will see Bangladesh beginning the T20I era without ace all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan as he announced retirement from the shorter format recently.

India’s head coach Gautam Gambhir will start his T20 campaign at home with this game and will be looking forward to see how his team shape up with Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and Jadeja retired from T20Is and would be keen to see how the new guys cope and play under home pressure considering the game is expected to be house full as all the tickets were sold within half-an-hour after it was put up online.