Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee Ekana Cricket Stadium (Lucknow) Pitch Report, Results & Stats

Ekana Cricket Stadium – Lucknow

The BRSABV Ekana Cricket Stadium is one of the newly-built stadiums in India. It’s located in Lucknow, which is the capital city of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The stadium is also currently one of the largest in the country and boasts of a capacity of close to 60,000. Being a relatively new stadium, it has only hosted a handful of international fixtures and some of them didn’t even involve the Indian cricket team. It is currently the home ground of the Indian T20 League team Lucknow Super Giants captained by KL Rahul which played its first Indian T20 League season in 2022 but only played their first home game at this stadium in 2023. It also served as the home base of the Indian Women’s T20 League team of the state. In August 2019, a request from Afghanistan Cricket Board was accepted to make the venue Afghanistan’s adopted home ground in the country for international fixtures in all formats.

Nature of the pitch
Though the sample size is quite small for the newly-constructed stadium, the pitch at Lucknow has been largely bowler friendly, with some rare good days for the batters. While on some occasions it has aided pacers, on many occasions, it has assisted spinners and led to low scoring contests. The first T20I played here saw India pile up 195 runs thanks to a masterful century from Rohit Sharma on a turning track, but in the subsequent T20I matches barring one, the pitches have offered assistance to the spinners. In the last T20I India played here against New Zealand, India’s batters took almost 20 overs to chase down a target of 100 runs. During India’s chase, New Zealand captain Mitchell Santner even suggested some of his faster bowlers to bowl spin seeing how much the track assisted spinners. Indian captain Hardik Pandya criticized the pitch at the post match presentation, leading to the sacking of the pitch curator after the match.

Even in the ODIs, the score of 250 has been made only once at this venue, which is an indication of how helpful the pitch is to bowlers, especially spinners as generally scores of 300+ are made easily in modern day cricket.

General Information about the Stadium
The BRSABV Ekana Cricket Stadium is a private property situated inside the Ekana Sportz City, which is a 137-acre unique sports-inspired community under Public Private Partnership that’s being developed in the outskirts of Lucknow. The building of the stadium was commissioned by the Akhilesh Yadav government in 2014. The construction of the stadium was completed by a private company Ekana Pvt. Ltd. in two years and eight months. Like most modern day stadiums, the BRSABV Ekana Cricket Stadium is also equipped to host day-night fixtures. Its two ends are called the North End and the South End. The stadium has only hosted one Test till now, and that too between Afghanistan and West Indies in 2019. In the subsequent years, the stadium hasn’t been able to host a Test match featuring India.

History
The stadium became the 52nd venue in the country to host an international cricketing fixture when it witnessed India defeat West Indies easily in a T20I played in November 2018. Just a day before the T20I, the stadium was renamed from Ekana International Stadium to Bharat Ratna Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee International Cricket Stadium in the honour of India’s former Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. This is the second stadium in Lucknow to have hosted International cricket, the first being KD Singh Babu Stadium which hosted a Test between India and Sri Lanka in 1994. However, the newly constructed stadium is in complete contrast to the older one as it has state of the art facilities and provides a great view to the spectator, irrespective of whichever part of the stadium they are present in.

Trivia
Indian batter Rohit Sharma scored a record breaking 4th T20I century of his career against West Indies in 2018.
West Indies’ spinner Rahkeem Cornwall took 7 wickets in a neutral Test against Afghanistan to help the team win the Test. His 7-75 are the best figures in a neutral Test played in India.
In the same Test, Rahkeem Cornwall ended with 10 wickets in the match, making him the West Indian spinner with the best bowling figures in India.