The upcoming edition of the Champions Trophy 2025 is only one month and 11 days away. The tournament will be hosted by Pakistan with India’s matches awarded to Dubai. Meanwhile, it seems that another ICC tournament might go down as a mess. The USA leg of the Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 was marred with mismanagement and lack of facilities in New York.
It seems that the Pakistan Cricket Board is racing against time to complete the renovation work at three venues, i.e Rawalpindi (Rawalpindi Stadium), Karachi (National Stadium), and Lahore (Gaddafi Stadium). These venues will host the majority of the matches during the tournament which meant that the recently concluded Quaid-e-Azam Trophy 2024-25 were played on different venues in these cities.
Condition of Pakistan cricket stadiums:
— Johns (@JohnyBravo183) January 8, 2025
Less than a month left for Champions Trophy and nothing's even 50% ready.
AFG, AUS, SA & ENG will play their matches here, so good luck to their fans, players and journalists. pic.twitter.com/p6ZynuAajI
As per the reports, some of the construction work finished on December 15 but the grey structure is still not prepared. The deadline for the grey structure (excluding the paint, finishing work, etc) was on December 31. The renovation work includes upgrades to the main building, new dressing rooms, media centers, hospitality boxes, and board offices. A new electronic scoreboard is being installed.
New chairs are being placed in the enclosures, and the fencing around the ground is being entirely replaced. Right ahead of the fencing, a 10 feet tunnel has been built so that the fans don’t encroach the playing area.
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12.8 billion PKR was allocated for renovation work ahead of Champions Trophy 2025
Last year, a sum total of 12.8 billion Pakistan Rupees were allocated for the renovation work of the three stadiums in Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Lahore. Out of them, 7.7 billion were allocated for Lahore alone. Apart from this, 1100 million were allocated for steel-structure pavilion across three venues, 3,471 million PKR for a concrete office building, 1,250 million PKR for the steel structure of the enclosure, 189 million PKR for a moat, and 330 million PKR for the replacement of two LED digital screens.
The board also planned to replace the floodlights with 480 LED bulbs at Gaddafi Stadium at a cost 523 million PKR, while 375 million PKR were allocated for the installation of seats, and 93 million PKR for external development works. The PCB has earmarked 3.5 billion PKR for renovating the National Stadium in Karachi including the new construction.
