MCA confident about Wankhede Stadium

The negative reports on Wankhede Stadium by the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) venue inspection team has not demoralised the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) officials.

They are pretty confident that the venue would be ready to host the World Cup matches, starting on February 19.

The Wankhede Stadium is scheduled to stage three ties including the April 2 final of the mega event.

The venue inspection team, which visited last week, in their report stated that the MCA has overshot the deadline and it is not possible for the stadium to be completed by the end of the year.

“If construction is not completed by January 15, it is not possible to confirm that the venues will be in a suitable condition to be handed over by January 31,” the interim report said.

However, MCA joint secretary Lalchand Rajput said they are not worried and are not looking at any other option. “The ICC team saw the stadium last week and was happy. They had suggested a few things and we are carrying out their instructions. We aim to complete our work by Jan 15,” he said.

“We are very optimistic that the stadium would be completed and will be ready to host the World Cup ties. We haven’t thought of any second option,” he said.

Another MCA managing committee official exuded confidence that the World Cup final would be held here. “We have overshot the deadline but ICC in their next visit would return happy. There are some areas which need to be completed but all the other major things will be completed soon,” the official said.

The MCA is also banking on their president, Sharad Pawar, to step in if things go wrong. Pawar is the president of the ICC. “Pawar wants the Wankhede Stadium to host the World Cup final. That he’s the ICC president will help too. However, we are confident that we will be ready before the World Cup,” he said.

According to the reports, ICC also raised concerns over the preparedness of the under-renovation Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

“It (Eden Gardens) will be completed in January. But our plan was to complete it two months earlier,” CAB chief Jagmohan Dalmiya said.

“The ICC only wanted to know by which date it (stadium) will be done. It will be done by January, 2011” he added.