The Mumbai Cricket Association has reinstated and repositioned the two permanent seats at the Wankhede Stadium in the name of batting great Sunil Gavaskar. The seats had gone missing following a renovation of the venue in 2011.
The seats, reserved for Gavaskar and his wife at the Garware Pavilion to honour him at the time of his retirement, were not restored after bucket chairs were installed in place of cushioned wooden planks.
Nadim Memon, an MCA Apex Council member and a veteran curator, had asked the fellow Apex Council members to restore the two seats.
A day before Gavaskar’s 71st birthday, MCA issued a statement saying these seats will be reinstated. “It was brought to our notice, that the two fixed seats allotted to Smt. and Shri Sunil Gavaskar were inadvertently, not restored,” the MCA said in a release.
“However, the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) headed by the President, Dr. Vijay D. Patil, has decided not only to reinstate the two fixed seats in their honour but also re-position the two fixed seats in the name of Smt. and Shri Sunil Gavaskar, in the President’s Box at the Wankhede Stadium.”
The Wankhede Stadium renovation was carried out before the 2011 ODI World Cup.