Wankhede at 50: Stadium's journey from indispensable to the iconic

Wankhede Stadium's debut as an international cricket venue, when Clive Lloyd's West Indies team landed on Mumbai shores in the winter of 1974-75, is steeped in anecdotal history: some famous (Lloyd's magnificent unbeaten 242, for example), some rather infamous (a near match-ending crowd disturbance).

- Rutvick Mehta and Rasesh Mandani

MUMBAI:

Yet, in all that emotional blur, there's something that Vilas Godbole, the only living member of the then Bombay Cricket Association's committee that decided to build the stadium, vividly remembers.

Back then, operating those old-fashioned manual scoreboards was a tedious, thankless task done by officials. The scoreboard for this Wankhede Test, placed on the rooftop of North Stand, had cricketers from the city man the numbers. Mind you, these were local players of some repute.

“The great Vijay Merchant, who was on air commentating, was amazed at how quickly and accurately the scoreboard was being operated,” Godbole recalls.

That manual scoreboard may have been replaced by jazzy electronic scoreboards, but the pride of place that Wankhede Stadium holds in the city's cricketing folklore continues to be felt as passionately by players and cricket lovers alike. And, as the 33,500-capacity venue completes a landmark half-century this month—on January 23, 1975, the first ball in the India-West Indies Test was bowled—it has evolved from being indispensable to iconic, not just for Mumbai but Indian cricket.

It has seen record runs and magical spells. It has seen sweat, blood and fire. It has seen tears rolling down Sachin Tendulkar's eyes in his farewell Test and MS Dhoni raising the collective mood of a nation with that six as India lifted the 50-over World Cup after 28 years. And, almost quintessentially Mumbai, it has seen redevelopment.

Karsan Ghavri sure has seen it all. The former India all-rounder was part of two landmark matches at the stadium—the first-ever first-class match (Mumbai vs Baroda) and the first-ever Test—that were played within a span of two months in 1974-75.