The stadium in Greater Noida - Shaheed Vijay Singh Pathik Stadium - has already been part of Indian cricket history. It was here in 2016, three years after it was inaugurated, that the pink-ball edition of the Duleep Trophy was held. Now, on Monday, it will become the 30th and latest Test venue in India. Not with an India Test, though, but Afghanistan vs New Zealand. But for that to happen, the weather must play ball.
On Sunday, the day before the start of the Test, the handful of reporters covering the match saw the ground covered in blue. This was in the early afternoon, after reporters were allowed in to attend the press conferences. Sheets. Over the whole playing area. Groundstaff strolling around on it, making sure no gaps had been left for the water to seep through.
Afghanistan, we learned, had trained in the morning when the rain relented. New Zealand, scheduled to go in for a feel of the ground at 1pm, didn't get their chance. That said, both teams had trained at the ground the last two days, and Afghanistan had also played a three-day intra-squad match here in the lead-up to the Test. But the signs aren't fantastic.
It's been pretty much the same since August 30, when we first visited the ground. Rain hasn't stayed away from Greater Noida through this whole period. There are forecasts of rain and the occasional thunderstorm every day of the Test match. Which means Afghanistan's tenth Test match, and their first in their latest "home" might not happen at all, and even if it does, could be a stop-and-start affair. It's also their first Test against New Zealand, who would also have wanted to get some action under their belts with five World Test Championship games - two in Sri Lanka and three in India - immediately after this.
"We cannot control the rain and just hope that it does not rain during the match, and we can enjoy the game," Afghanistan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi said in a press conference on Sunday.
It hasn't been easy work for the groundstaff, but the evidence also suggested that the drainage here isn't fantastic. Well after the rain had stopped on Sunday, the covers stayed on, and the ground felt damp, despite the covers. On August 30, the entire ground was wet from overnight rain, and attempts were on to dry the pitch with table fans. It worked well enough for the intra-squad match to be played from September 3-5, with occasional stops for the rain.
"The match referee has the right to take stock of the field conditions and declare them playable [or not]," New Zealand captain Tim Southee said. "As a player our job is to go on the field and play. We are hoping for clear weather and the game to take place."
The chief curator here is Amit Sharma, an experienced hand who has in the past worked on pitches for premier Indian domestic tournaments and has been part of the team at Kanpur's Green Park. He knows his job, but did say a few days back that it would be a big challenge to make the ground playable if the rains continued. On Sunday, he stayed away from the press even as two Super Soppers did their work.
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After the ICC gave the Greater Noida facility the go-ahead to serve as an international cricket venue, it quickly became Afghanistan's "home" stadium, though they have hosted teams in Lucknow and Dehradun - as well as Abu Dhabi - too. There have been five ODIs and six T20Is here, all between 2017 and 2020.
On Sunday, Shahidi made a bit of a plea to the powers-that-be - BCCI and the Afghanistan Cricket Board, in the main - to give them a proper, permanent venue to play their home games at, since they can't host teams in their own country. "India is our home and when we host teams, the other nations have played more cricket than us here," he said. "So hopefully we will get one good venue here in India and we stick with that."
This Test could have been, and still might be, the start of that process. Even if it's disrupted, and drying the ground takes longer than at the better stadiums around the world, there should be some cricket played. Enough for people to sprawl out on the grass banks on three sides of the ground - a three-storey concrete building at the pavilion end completes the décor - to have a good time.
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