By Qaiser Mohammad Ali
IANS
Dhaka : The modern Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium will become the country's sixth venue to host Test matches when it hosts the second Test between India and Bangladesh Friday.
Built initially for football, the 40,000-capacity stadium in Mirpur suburb of the capital is now purely a cricket venue and there are ambitious plans for the stadium, including plans to shift the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) offices and the national academy here.
All previous 17 Tests and 58 one-day internationals matches played in Dhaka, including Bangladesh's debut match in 2000 against India, were held at the Bangabandhu Stadium, but now that venue is used for only football matches.
Babiul Alam Khokon, one of the oldest officials involved with the Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium as a curator, has a reason to smile on the eve of hosting the Test match.
"I am happy because I am curator in the first Test," Khokon told IANS.
"But I am not overly excited as I am around for 10 years as curator and now every match is the same for me," he said, clearly underplaying his contribution.
The other international venues of Bangladesh, besides the two in Dhaka, are the M.A. Aziz Stadium and Bir Shrestha Shahid Ruhul Amin Stadium in Chittagong, Khula Division Stadium in Khula, Narayanganj Osmani Stadium in Fatullah and Shaheed Chandu Stadium in Bogra.
But only five of them have hosted Test matches.
With Sher-e-Bangla Stadium now the hub of the game in the country, BCB is planning to shift its National Cricket Academy here, besides its offices from Nabhan Tower in Gulshan.
"At present, the BCB has rented out 80 shops under the spectators' stands. But there are plans to shut all the shops and use it for cricketing purposes," a BCB official told IANS.
"Among the plans is to start eight restaurants, one of which will remain open throughout the year. The other seven are proposed to operate during matches."
The construction work started about two years ago, when the basic idea was to use the ground for soccer. But cricket started being played even when the construction was still going on.
The stadium hosted matches against Zimbabwe, Scotland, England 'A' and Pakistan and Sri Lanka academy sides amongst other teams.
The first one-day international at Sher-e-Bangla Stadium was played on December 8 last year when Bangladesh defeated Zimbabwe by eight wickets.
The dressing rooms for the two teams were completed last month, just ahead of the Indian tour.
India played the first two of the three ODIs here and won both, before heading for Chittagong for the first test.