Canada announces plans to construct $700m state-of-the-art cricket stadium

This is how the proposed cricket stadium in Canada might look

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has long held an ambition of making cricket popular in the United States of America (USA) and hence has taken several measures in recent years to see it become a reality.

The ICC’s efforts could bear fruit soon, but it is Canada instead of the USA who seem to be making the leap.

The Canadian cricket authorities have announced that they are planning to build a cutting edge stadium in Toronto with a capacity of 35,000, which will approximately cost $700m, and that they are going to do so with the aim of conducting international matches “within 4-5 years”.

The cricket authorities are planning to have a fixed roof and a natural grass field in the stadium, which will allow matches to be staged even during the ice-cold winters in Toronto.

"Our plan is to have this stadium built and ready for international cricket within four to five years," said Bob Mitchell, who is the president of the Canadian Premier League T20.

"There isn’t a stadium anywhere in the world like the one we intend to build."

This is a welcome move for cricket in Canada and will hopefully help in attracting the locals to cricket.

Roy Singh, the CLPT20 Chief Executive Officer, is proud of the stadium coming up in Canada and wants it to be a benchmark for future cricket facilities in the North American continent.

He said, "The stadium is actually state of the art for North America. We want to set the tone for high-quality, state-of-the-art facilities for cricket, starting in Canada."

While securing the funds for the state-of-the-art stadium hasn’t been an issue, the primary obstacle has been to get money to host Canadian cricket’s ambitious domestic event, Canadian Premier League.

Roy, however, is more than happy with the proceedings so far. He said: "With this financing (to build the stadium) we can now move to the next phase of selecting a site and securing further investors for this ambitious project."