KOCHI: The Maharaja’s College Stadium used to be the most talked about sporting venue in Kerala. That was until the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium came up 15 years ago.
Take a walk now, and it would be difficult to believe that acclaimed World Cup footballers like striker Oleg Blokhin, goalkeeper Rinat Dassaiyev and midfielder Alexei Mikhailchenko of the erstwhile Soviet Union had graced the ground during the Nehru Gold Cup international football tournament in 1985.
Members of the Diego Maradona-led Argentina squad that finished runners-up in ‘Italia ‘90’, like goalkeeper Nery Pumpido and midfielder Ricardo Giusti, too have left their imprint here, playing in an exhibition game in the early 1990s.
Kerala’s first ever Santosh Trophy triumph too came at the Maharaja’s, way back in 1973. The defunct and rusting floodlights at the stadium were installed the same year while the Nehru Cup was held for the first time here in 1983. After the synthetic athletics track was laid five years ago, it has primarily become an athletics venue, with national meets being conducted regularly.
Still the only venue available for holding football matches in the city, the famed turf presents a painful picture.
Long overdue of an overhaul, the dry, rough and uneven surface is expecting a revival with the infrastructural developments being planned for the 35th National ames allotted to the state.
Though it is as an athletics venue that the Maharaja’s Synthetic Track Committee has submitted a proposal to the state government to develop the ground, the football fraternity too is hopeful of a positive offshoot.
“We have submitted a proposal to the Kerala State Sports Council to consider the stadium as the athletics venue for the National Games,” said the MSTC secretary and Maharaja’s College Physical Education Department head T P Sellen.
“If the stadium is accepted as the athletics venue, the ground too will have to be renovated.”
He said the surface could be relaid at a cost of around `40 lakh.
“The soil now is very hard. Just one extra layer of soft sand has to be laid to smoothen the surface. The grass will grow back with good care,” Sellen said. But the budding footballers in the city, with four professional clubs playing in the Wayna Cochin Premier League, will have to wait till the next government takes shape before a decision is made on the proposal.
Even if the venue is not accepted as the athletics venue, the officials expect the ground to be included in the scheme for infrastructural development, which is one of the stated objectives of hosting the national games.