Bitterness In Mumbai Is Misplaced!

There is bitterness in Mumbai City with the Mumbai Cricket Association (Wankhede Stadium) not being awarded one of the five Test matches for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against Australia for the home international season of 2026-2027. The rancour is misplaced though. The BCCI follows a rotation policy to award Test matches. In the yesteryears, Bombay (Mumbai Cricket Association), Madras (Tamil Nadu CA) /now Chennai), Kanpur/Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh CA), Kolkata (Cricket Association of Bengal) and Delhi (Delhi & Districts CA) were determined as the permanent Test centres and they held the multi-day Test matches by rotation. Afterwards, Bengaluru (Karnataka State CA), Hyderabad (Hyderabad CA), Ahmedabad (Gujarat CA) and Mohali (Punjab CA) and Nagpur (Vidarbha CA) were added to the Test-match centre list. The numbers swelled in the last decade or so with Ranchi, Dharamsala, Indore, Rajkot, Pune, Visakhapatnam and Guwahati added as Test match centres. The first Test in India was held at the Bombay Gymkhana and the nearby Cricket Club of India has played host to 18 Tests at the Brabourne Stadium. The Corporation Stadium in Chennai has hosted nine Test matches. In the first week of June, New Chandigarh will join the Test match centre list. With the BCCI members creating new infrastructure, the first five permanent Test centres have been losing out, forced to share Test matches with new centres. Ahmedabad has held more in the last five years because it had to forgo matches for three years because the Stadium at Motera was being rebuilt. Ditto seems to be the case with Guwahati that made its Test debut hosting the India-South Africa Test last November. The Mumbai CA may help its cause by playing Ranji Trophy matches at the Wankhede and demonstrate that the Churchgate venue is its primary ground, not the one at BKC.