Here are four things to know about the Raipur Stadium that will host 2nd ODI between India and New Zealand

After narrowly winning the 1st ODI against New Zealand by 12 runs in Hyderabad, India will take on the Kiwis for the second match at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium in Raipur, Chhattisgarh on Saturday, January 21st.This venue has some history related to this and here in this piece, we will know four things about this lesser-known cricket stadium in Raipur.

Here are the four things that you need to know about the Raipur Stadium –

• The Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadiumin Raipur is the 50th venue in the country to host an ODImatch.
• This magnificent cricket stadium in Raipur is named after Veer Narayan Singh Binjhwar - a landlord from Sonakhan, who spearheaded the 1857 war for India's independence in the state of Chhattisgarh.
• Built in 2008, this stadium has played as a home venue for Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals) in the pastduring 2013 and 2015 editions of IPL, including hosting eight matches of the now-scrapped CLT20 as well.
• The Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Cricket Stadium has a capacity of nearly 50,000 which makes it the third-largest stadium in India and fourth-largest in the world.

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As the Raipur stadium is geared up to host the 2nd ODI on Saturday, Mukul Tiwari - the secretary of Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh (Association), in a discussion with Times of India (TOI) on Thursday said it is a proud moment for everyone here and that knowing the craze for cricket in this part of the country, the sale of tickets (inside six minutes) didn’t come as a surprise.

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"It's a proud moment for us, and we are geared up for it. There's a tremendous craze for cricket here. This can be gauged by the fact that when we opened the ticket sales for this match at a ticketing platform, all the tickets were sold within 6 hours of us doing that. Still, people are queuing up outside the stadium, hoping to get tickets. We've reserved around 4,000 seats for schoolchildren at a price of Rs 300 per ticket," Mukul Tiwari told TOI.

Shedding more light on what this stadium has to offer, Tiwaricontinued saying, "Our preparations for this match have been very good. We have a world-class stadium which can accommodate almost 50,000 spectators. The outfield is lush green and the pitch is sporting. Our aim is to bid to become one of the cities which stages one of the games of the ODI World Cup later this year, and we want to put up a grand show which will enable us to do that.”

Chhattisgarh State Cricket Sangh (Association) that became the full-member of the BCCI back in 2016 has invited presidents and secretaries of all the associations in the country to come and watch the game live. Speaking further on this, Tiwariadded, "This is one of the biggest sporting events of our state. We'll have a laser show after the match, which will showcase the culture of Chhattisgarh. We've invited the presidents and secretaries of all the associations in India to watch the match. Jay Shah BCCI secretary) was supposed to be here as well, but he won't be able to make it due to personal commitments."