The Railway Stadium of Dhanbad, the centre of district and national level cricketing activities, situated at the heart of town, is set for a makeover as pitch repair work was launched on Wednesday.

The work at the stadium, which has hosted Ranji Trophy matches in 2010-11 and 2011-12 and the Cooch Behar trophy during 2008, is likely to be completed within a fortnight.

This apart, construction work of a sports hostel meant to accommodate visiting players in under-16 and under-19 teams is nearing completion.

Talking to The Telegraph Online on Wednesday, pitch curator of Railway stadium, Dhanbad Dulal Banerjee, said, “The soil consignment for renovating the pitch has arrived last week from Calcutta and the primary work began formally since today and it will take around a fortnight to complete the renovation work.”

“The renovation of the pitch is generally required after five or six years and since the ground has been lying unused since some time due to the pandemic related constraints of sporting activities, we decided to conduct the renovation work now,” Banerjee.

“The dressing room renovation of the stadium has already been completed and air conditioners etc have also been installed in the stadium” said Banerjee and added that rubber tile flooring has also been carried out in the dressing room to avoid any accident due to slip.

Regarding the ongoing work of sports hostel development near the railway stadium he said that the hostel equipped with the state-of-art facilities and equipment is likely to be ready within a month.

“Earlier, organisers of different interstate and under-16 and under-19 tournaments had to face difficulty in accommodating the visiting players from other states and due to lack of hostels they had to be accommodated in different hotels but now they can be accommodated in the hostel itself,” said Banerjee and added that the hostel can accommodate two team members simultaneously.

Confirming the development, Madhusudan T.V., Senior Divisional Commercial Manager of Dhanbad Division of East Central Railway, who is also the sports officer of Dhanbad Division, said, ``The sports hostel development work is likely to be completed within two months.”

In 2012, some renovation of the existing boundary wall of the stadium besides some new development work in the stadium was carried out including the gymnasium and toilets.