The standoff between the Karnataka government and the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) continues to increase in intensity. As per latest reports, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru will not get to host a single match in the upcoming Women's ODI World Cup that starts in September. As per the initial schedule, the venue was slated to host four games, including India's fixtures against Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, alongside the first semifinal of the tournament. The other fixture scheduled at the venue is between England and South Africa. All of these games are expected to be rescheduled to a new venue although there are no updates yet on where that could be.
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This development comes as a hammer blow to the KSCA who were hoping to reclaim some of the lost mileage through the ODI World Cup. Since the infamous stampede issue that happened at the ground during Royal Challengers Bengaluru's IPL victory celebrations, the venue has been barred from hosting any form of competitive cricket. Karnataka's domestic T20 league, the Maharaja Trophy, had to be moved to Mysore owing to the existing standoff between the KSCA and the Karnataka Government. As per the independent investigations carried out by the Justice Michael D'Cunha commission, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium has been described as 'fundamentally unsafe' for hosting global events of a large scale.
The committee dwelt further on the architecture of the ground and deemed it unreasonable to host any events that could have high-capacity crowds. The number of entry and exit points, and the mismatch in their positioning has been marked out as a key factor in this final decision from the commission. Ironically, the ground has been witness to a plethora of international games over the last few decades, apart from 15 IPL seasons without a single major hazard reported, until the stampede issue occurred this year. That has now put the KSCA and the stadium in a soup, with the road ahead seemingly unclear at this point.
Thiruvananthapuram is a frontrunner to replace Bengaluru in the World Cup but a final decision is yet to be taken in this regard. The Greenfield Stadium is one of the practice venues prior to the main event, so there is a possibility of the ground getting a preference in such a scenario, although the logistics will need to be reworked.