BCCI Bans Greater Noida Stadium

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has stripped the Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Sports Complex of its status to host board-authorised games.

Situated in Greater Noida, the stadium got the approval to host international matches between Full Member teams from International Cricket Council (ICC) in December 2016.  It successfully hosted the last edition of the Duleep Trophy which was the first instance of the tournament being played with pink ball under the floodlights. It had also hosted a few matches of the last Ranji Trophy season.

Last year, the stadium became the home ground for the Afghanistan cricket team after they decided to shift their home ground from Sharjah. The Noida-based stadium also hosted the 2015–17 ICC Intercontinental Cup match between Afghanistan cricket team and Namibia cricket team in April 2016 which the former won by an innings and 36 runs. Earlier this year, Afghanistan and Ireland played 5 ODIs and 3 T20Is at the venue in March 2017.

However, the stadium will not be able to hosts such matches at least as of now. According to a report in The Hindu, BCCI’s anti-corruption stadium was miffed after the stadium was leased for staging a private league. The suspicious nature of the league met with the Board’s disapproval which did not hesitate in stripping the venue of its status of holding its matches from this season.