The Ahmedabad Ground That Only the Scoreboard Remembers Now

There is a corner in the press box of Ahmedabad's Narendra Modi Stadium from which the old Motera pitch used to be visible. From that corner now, a new pitch is visible, a camera tower is visible, and an empty seat is visible — the seat where a local curator sat for twelve years, filling his net-session diary before every match. Before this season's first Test, he called me and said, "Nobody asks what the pitch is like anymore." That phone call is the beginning of this article — because when asking about a ground's pitch stops, it means asking about that ground has stopped in a much larger sense.

I have spent more than seventeen years covering cricket in Ahmedabad. In 2026, when I embedded for forty-two days with the Gujarat Lions through their final IPL season, I logged every flight, every hotel and every net session in my travel diary. That habit remains. When I came to Ahmedabad for this Test, a new entry went into the diary: "6:40 AM — four groundstaff standing near the pitch, but none with the curator. The curator was in a room under the stand, watching the broadcast schedule." This is the same curator who, in his fiftieth year, has begun to feel that his job is no longer making a pitch but making a pitch presentable for television.

What a booked room means

Pitch politics in Ahmedabad is old. In the Motera days, the local curator was treated as the ground's owner — he decided how much grass the seamers got and how dry it was for the spinners. Now that decision happens in three places: in a BCCI pitch committee meeting, in the broadcaster's production plan, and in a franchise's social-media calendar. When I asked the curator who decided the pitch this time, he said, "The one who sold the tickets." I did not push him. I just wrote in my diary that the pitch decision is passing into hands that sell.

This sounds old, but in Ahmedabad's context it has a different meaning. This city is one of the three or four places where Test cricket's long tradition and the IPL's new economy live side by side. Its audiences are of two kinds: those who can come at nine in the morning and sit for five days, and those who come only after seven in the evening when a big name comes out to bat. The pitch decision has become a tug-of-war between the two. When the pitch is flat, the Test stretches to the fifth day and the broadcaster gets five days of advertising. But when the pitch is flat, the viewer starts getting bored from day one. I have watched eight Tests at this ground and I have seen the same pattern every time — a pitch that is good for television is bad for the man who plans to arrive at nine in the morning and sit for five days.

What the scoreboard does not show

In this season's Test, 550 runs were scored in the first innings. The scoreboard showed that this is a batsman's ground. But I sat in the stands and saw that in the third day's afternoon session, only eleven per cent of seats in the eastern half of the stadium were filled. On day one, that figure was forty-eight per cent. This drop was not only because of the heat — I asked three spectators who had come on day one and not on day three. One said, "Five hundred runs are done, what is left to watch?" The second said, "I saw the highlights on TV yesterday, that is enough." The third said, "The ticket was four hundred, water and snacks two-fifty, six-fifty in all. I am not coming tomorrow."

The third answer is the most important. I have recorded in my travel log since 2026 how the spectator's arithmetic has changed in Gujarat. Earlier, the spectator weighed the ticket price against the experience of the match. Now he weighs the ticket price, the price of food and drink, and the highlights he gets free on television. When five hundred runs are scored in a Test, the TV viewer feels he has watched the whole match — while the spectator in the stadium knows the real pleasure comes when the ball seams on the grass and the batsman struggles on the next ball. That experience does not transfer to the screen.

The franchise's shadow

There is another layer here that is often ignored. Ahmedabad has an IPL team, and that team is owned by a company that is also involved in stadium upkeep. This fact is public, but its effect is under-written: when a Test is played, the same stadium staff who work for the franchise during the IPL are on duty. I saw twice this season that during the Test, banners with the IPL team's logo were still up in one part of the stadium. It is a small thing, but it tells you that Test cricket now arrives at this ground as a guest, not as a host.

I spoke to a franchise analyst about this, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. He said, "For us a Test match is a logistics event. We know which stand will be empty and where parking space is needed. We do not know what the pitch will be like, and to be honest we do not care." I wrote that sentence down twice — once in my diary, once in my phone notes. Because it is the answer that shows the Test ecosystem now lives in the same building as the IPL ecosystem, but the door between them is closed.

Now to the thing least written about in this whole piece — the press conference. At the press conference before this Test, eleven questions were asked. I counted: seven were about batting form, two about injuries, one about the pitch, and one about the weather. Nobody asked how many days the pitch had taken to make, or who decided how much grass to leave on it. Fifteen years ago, at a similar press conference at Motera, I asked that question myself and the curator refused to answer. Now the question is not asked at all. When the question is not asked, there is no need to refuse an answer.

The song that is no longer sung

Over the past few years I have lost something at this ground in Ahmedabad that I am trying to put into words. At the old Motera ground, when a local batsman played well, a particular clap used to go around — two slow beats, three fast. The clap was based on the rhythm of a Gujarati song that used to be sung at the ground in the seventies. I last heard it in 2026. In this new stadium it does not happen. A DJ plays instead, and the DJ plays what the broadcaster has chosen. This may sound like a small thing, but to me it is the clearest evidence of the whole system.

I spoke to three spectators this time who were over thirty and who used to be regulars at the old Motera ground. One said, "I do not feel like coming here now, the commentary is better on TV." The second said, "You get tickets online, but it is not the same pleasure as a crowd." The third said, "I only come for the IPL now, not Tests." The third answer sells the most — and it hurts the most. Because it means a whole generation has stopped watching Test cricket, and replaced it with a cricket in which something happens on every ball.

But here I want to be clear, because I know some people will read this and say I am mourning the old days. I am not. In 2026 I spent forty-two days with the Gujarat Lions in their final season and I saw how a franchise's exit changed the city's fan identity. Some people said then too that this was the city's loss. The truth is that the city rebuilt its fan identity elsewhere — some people became fans of another team, some began watching only Tests, some stopped coming to the stadium and watched only on TV. A city is never empty, its voice simply changes frequency. And when the frequency changes, so do those who listen to it — which is my real subject.

What is not being written down

There is a section in my diary titled "Records that are no longer made." In it I have listed the Ranji matches in the last ten years whose reports no major newspaper or website carried. This year's list has forty-one matches. Forty-one. In at least seven of these, performances occurred that equalled fifty-year-old records. But nobody wrote about them, because it was IPL auction day, or a trade rumour had come, or a foreign league draft was on.

This is not a complaint. It is a report on a system. When a digital desk has to decide what will get clicks, the fourth day of a Ranji match is nowhere on that list. But it has a direct consequence: there is now no single person who holds the record of first-class cricket. Once each state had one or two reporters who knew the Ranji scorebook without looking. Those reporters have retired and nobody replaced them, because there is no money in that work. When I ask a young reporter who took the most wickets in Ranji last year, he Googles it. Google does not know either, because nobody wrote it down.

I am part of this system myself and I do not want to hide it. When I was writing this Test match report, my editor asked whether I could add a paragraph on a Ranji match in which a young batsman scored a double hundred. I said I did not even know his name. That is my shame, but it is not mine alone. It is the shame of a whole profession that decided first-class cricket did not need covering.

The moment a reporter decides

People often ask me how I write the truth while working between the board and the franchises. My answer is always the same: I cover the institution, I do not work for it. But it is not that easy. When you talk to a curator and he tells you his side, you know that if you print it, he will not pick up the phone next time. I have made that decision many times in my career — what to print and what to keep in the diary. It is not an ideal situation. It is a bargain, and I will call it a bargain.

But this year, during this Test, I made a decision that was new for me. The curator had told me how the pitch was made and had also said not to print it. I did not print what he said. But I did print that nobody asks about the pitch. That is one way — you do not print the man's words, but you print the system's. For me that is the most honest route. You cannot print the man who will pick up the phone next time, but you can print the system that made him worth calling.

Here I must also admit that one side of this article is weak. I have stressed that asking about the pitch has declined, but I have not shown that the broadcaster now decides how the pitch is made. That is my inference, not a proven fact. I spoke to three people and all three gave different answers. One said the BCCI decides, the second said the state association does, the third said the franchise has no role. When three officials give three answers to one question, it means the decision is made somewhere else. But where, I do not know. And that is the biggest gap in this whole argument — one I do not want to hide.

Back to that empty seat

On the last day of the match I went to that same corner of the press box from which the pitch is visible. The seat was empty. I sat there, opened my diary and wrote down that day's score. 550 in the first innings, 320 in the second, 210 in the third, and the match drawn. Not one spectator left saying this was a historic match. Because it was not a historic match. It was a match that did its job — ran five days, runs were scored, ads appeared on TV, and the scoreboard was switched off.

I wrote a line in my diary under that day, and it is still there: "The stadium is now known not by its name but by its scoreboard." I did not write that line in emotion. I wrote it when I saw that the shops outside the stadium had no poster of the Test match, but IPL team jerseys were selling. When you have to tell someone a stadium's identity, look at what is selling outside.

Now let me tell you something about the next series that I deliberately did not put in this article. Next season, there may be no Test match in Ahmedabad. The schedule I have seen has a limited-overs match here and an IPL play-off match. I have this from an official who is still an official, so I will not name him and I cannot confirm it. But if it is true, it means that seat from which the pitch is visible will not be empty next year because nobody sits there — it will be empty because there is no pitch to watch.

I want to leave this last thought as a question. When a city has a ground that hosts Test cricket, what does the city have — a building, or a habit? And if that habit is dying, will someone make a pitch to save it, or will all of us together learn to look after the empty seat?