Just before IPL19 begins, the M Chinnaswamy Stadium will include at its core an XI that has slipped from public memory: Divyanshi BS, 14, Shivalanga Chandappa, 17, Shravan KT, 18, Chinmayi Shetty, 19, Bhoomik Lakshman, 19, Manoj Kumar 20, Prajwal G, 22, Sahana Rajesh, 25, Akshata Pai, 26, Poorna Chandra, 26 and Kamakshi Devi, 29. They are, in order of age, the 11 fans who died in a stampede at the stadium on the afternoon of June 4, 2025.
That stampede is India’s most grievous sporting disaster this century. On August 26, 1980, 16 fans died during a Kolkata Derby at the Eden Gardens; again in a stampede that followed fighting in the stands. On November 26, 1995, 13 people were killed when a badly-built wall collapsed in Nagpur’s VCA Stadium during an India v New Zealand ODI. A recent newspaper report from Nagpur said the incident case file didn’t contain the charge sheet, the investigating officer’s name and nobody knew the status of the case in the police station where the FIR was registered.
Football in Kolkata moved to the Salt Lake stadium and international cricket in Nagpur to Jamtha. Cricket continues at the Chinnaswamy, with the new edition of IPL after nine months, and while it is of no comfort to the families who lost loved ones, the Karnataka State Cricket Association (KSCA) has ensured they will not be forgotten. Eleven seats in a premier stand will always be left empty never to be sold or occupied — as a mark of respect and memory to the XI.
When I read the news, it as if the vision of a magazine design team had come to life. Last year, I wrote about the Chinnaswamy for Luru Magazine, a quarterly, print-only city publication, speaking to cricketers, fans, architects and urban planners. I asked how the Chinnaswamy XI could be included as a part of a re-imagining of a beloved cricket ground that had witnessed the horror.
Architects said the XI’s names should become a visible element in the new design, maybe engraved in the walls for spectators to run their hands over or part of the landscaping. Only when the issue was released in November last year, did I see the stunning double-spread image by design lead Aditya Bharadwaj and creative director Raghav Krishna.
The image showed a grey bank of KSCA’s stands, 11 yellow empty seats, separated by an insert with the names of the eleven who had lost their lives. This was more than a plaque with their names, more than a one-time minute’s silence in their memory. We will remember the XI from those empty seats. Seek forgiveness and say ‘never again.’ Anywhere.
Chinnaswamy, structurally the oldest of the five traditional Test centres, has an opportunity to become the venue that sets the template for improved crowd safety and comfort in Indian cricket stadia. Unlike the others — Kotla, Wankhede, Chepauk and Eden Gardens — it has only had piecemeal changes in its 50 years but no structural revamp.
Till late last year, its spectator stands, in particular, were shabby, with broken staircases tiles, limited disability access and multi-level, obstacle-course entry areas. The members seating areas had potholes in the stands and dirty seats. The previous administration of the KSCA has to take much blame for the state of the stadium and how it was run post the bucket-seat upgrade in 2011. The new administration’s promises of improvement, spectator comfort and safety will need to be visible in concrete and cement and plastic.
Before the IPL opener, we read about mock drills being conducted. The space occupied by the Chinnaswamy’s B-ground will be turned into a large public concourse during matches. A raised walkway protecting the wickets and the ground is aimed at ensuring smooth entry of spectators before they disperse to their various stands without crowding the public roads outside the stadium.
But these changes — part of only the short-term implementation phase of the remodelling of the stadium — are the very least required. Once the IPL is done, there should be no going back to the old bandaid-ed KSCA. Three months after the tragedy, I saw fire sprinklers being installed in the walkways under the Chinnaswamy. Dozens of empty red boxes waited to house extinguishers. KSCA election delay was the mumbled explanation for everything.
In 2020-2021, during the Architect Premier League, a senior KSCA official had asked organiser-architects about the best way to renovate the ground. They were told, before anything else, KSCA needed to conduct a fire and safety audit. In January 2025, an RTI query from a member asked KSCA when the last fire and safety audit had been conducted at the Chinnaswamy. The RTI reply: ‘we don’t have to answer this’.
KSCA’s offices have framed architectural drawings of a renovated Chinnaswamy, dating from the 2013-2017 administration. Matching the ideas of architects and planners for my story, that design shows a modern city-centre stadium, free of walls and barbed wire, with entry at door, not gate. It’s highly unlikely that the KSCA will give any of its walled real estate to the urban commons.
Regardless, post IPL19, a stand-by-stand reconstruction of the stadium is mandatory. Its terrible tragedy reminds us that the new Chinnaswamy’s priorities should be spectator experience, crowd control and transit access. Before increasing spectator capacity to 50,000 and adding VIP parking. Because Chinnaswamy matters; its original home, its fans past, present and those taken from us, matter. When a rumour circulated that a 100,000-seater stadium was being built in a Bangalore suburb, a cricketer said, “that’s like moving Tirupati to a hillock somewhere else and expecting its aura to remain.”
