The artefacts at the Kriradipti Sports Museum in Siliguri — the only such centre in north Bengal, housed at the Kanchenjunga Stadium — are all eye-catchers.

However, the place needs to be promoted better, said many. The façade of the museum has moss and paint is peeling off. The lights are not adequate.

“The sports museum was inaugurated by Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and Irfan Pathan in 2006. Then Siliguri MLA Asok Bhattacharya had played a pivotal role in the entire project,” said a source. “After the inauguration there were no attempts to promote the place. The place is opened by a caretaker from noon till 7 pm but there are hardly any visitors.”

The museum is rich with contributions from international sports stars.

India’s former cricket captain Sourav Ganguly has donated a pair of pads, gloves and a cricket bat used to score one of his 38 international centuries. Cricketer Md Kaif gave his country cap.

There are signed stumps of the Australian cricket team and one that was used during the India-Pakistan match in 2004 along with a jersey of the Indian cricket team.

Tennis star Mahesh Bhupati’s T-shirt and tennis racket are part of the collection apart from various artefacts of hockey star Gurubux Singh, swimmer Bula Choudhury and boxer Ali Qamar.

A board displaying an index of articles inside the museum. Picture by Passang Yolmo

But neglect is visible everywhere. “An index of articles ‘preserved’ at the museum tells its present story,” said a person familiar with the place. Many words have been erased from the index board, cricket stump has been misspelt as “stamp” and the names of sports personalities have been spelt in different ways on the same board.

Manoj Verma, cricket secretary of Siliguri Mahakuma Krira Parishad, said the condition of the museum has been in a bad state for a long time.

The SMKP, however, is not involved with the maintenance of the stadium and the museum.

Kanchenjunga Stadium, including the museum, was under a stadium committee headed by the Siliguri subdivisional officer.

“In September 2021, the committee was dissolved and the responsibility was taken over the state youth and sports department. Again, in June last year, an order was issued stating that the day-to-day maintenance of the stadium would be undertaken by the Siliguri Municipal Corporation (SMC),” said a source.

Ranjan Sarkar, the deputy mayor of the SMC, said that efforts would be made to maintain the sports museum.

“We have recently been entrusted with the maintenance of the place. We are looking at hosting big-ticket matches for which we need to carry out maintenance of the place. We will definitely work on the museum as well,” said Sarkar.