The M Chinnaswamy Stadium will stage competitive cricket later this month, the first time a ball will be bowled there since the fatal crush outside its gates on 4 June that claimed 11 lives during Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s IPL victory parade.
The ground has been pencilled in for six matches of the K Thimmappiah Memorial Trophy, a 16-team, red-ball pre-season competition run by the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA). One semi-final and the final are scheduled between 26 September and early October. Spectators, however, will not be permitted.
Ajinkya Rahane, Venkatesh Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Vijay Shankar and Shashank Singh headline a field that also includes sides from Mumbai, Vidarbha and Madhya Pradesh. For the players it is valuable match time; for the KSCA it is a chance, at last, to show the venue can operate safely, albeit behind closed doors.
“Safety is our foremost priority and we will comply with every statutory requirement before admitting spectators,” the KSCA said in a short media note on Wednesday. Police permission arrived only after the board agreed to extensive crowd-management protocols and accepted that the terraces must remain empty.
Those promises follow weeks of scrutiny. A one-man tribunal, appointed by the state government, is still investigating the 4 June incident, and its interim report pulled no punches, labelling the stadium “unsafe for large-scale events”. Electricity supplier BESCOM has also cut the mains over what it calls outstanding fire-safety clearances, forcing the KSCA to run the place on generators and its rooftop solar array.
With paperwork incomplete, Chinnaswamy was stripped of five fixtures at the coming Women’s World Cup, including the opener and the final. The state’s T20 franchise event, the Maharaja Trophy, had to decamp to Mysuru after police ruled out even a behind-closed-doors option in Bengaluru. One local official joked, only half-seriously, that the lights are on at Chinnaswamy “because the sun still shines”.
Royal Challengers have remained largely silent since June but broke cover last week, confirming a payment of INR 25 lakh to each bereaved family. “We remain committed towards the welfare of the families affected by the tragic events of 4 June and to long-term improvements in crowd safety,” the club’s statement read.
Deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar, meanwhile, has set his sights elsewhere, revealing plans for a new 60,000-seater stadium on a 75-acre plot in the city’s industrial corridor. Ground-breakers in the KSCA are privately sceptical—land, money, politics, you know how it goes—but admit that Bengaluru probably needs another purpose-built venue if it wants to keep pace with Ahmedabad and Lucknow.
For now, though, the old place on Cubbon Road has a chance to remind everyone why it still matters. Sample the card: Rahane’s technique against Madhya Pradesh’s seamers or Vidarbha’s young spinners tackling a surface that, in early autumn, can offer just a hint of bounce and turn. No roaring crowds, granted, yet players often enjoy hearing their own calls echo around an empty bowl.
The bigger picture remains complicated. Fire exits must be widened, ticketing flows redesigned and, above all, trust rebuilt. That will take more than six quiet days of first-class cricket, yet every journey starts somewhere. If the matches pass off without drama, the KSCA can at least say it has made a start.
