when all eyes will be on england and chile play ers taking the field this sunday at the salt lake stadium there will be one man who wont be watch ing the match he will be busy looking at the galleries the roof the floodlights and even the grass on the fieldmeet hirak sen a 75yearold architect who was one of those who had planned designed and built the salt lake stadium back in 1984 and has now been employed as the only nongovernment or fifa associate of the 26member stadium advisory committee it was under his supervision that the salt lake stadium has undergone renovations worth rs 121 crore and has taken current shape that will be unveiled on sundaywhen i took up the project almost four decades ago i had visualized something like this says sen who lives a few blocks from the stadium at that time however we did not have enough funds now it feels great that the stadium has finally been given the dignity and dcor it so deserved i am still awed at the way the ground has been decked upsens architecture firm hk sen and associate and another company ballardie thompson and mathews pvt ltd had been approached in 1980 by minister subhas chakraborty and kamal basu the founder secretary of society for sports and stadium with a shoestring budget of rs 90000 a new stadium was conceived because the club grounds at the maidan each with a capacity of around 20000 were proving too small for the huge crowds on match days and while the eden gardens was there to handle some of the bigger games the pressure of handling both cricket and football was proving a bit too much for the stadiumthe brief was simple make the stadium very big sen recounts it was challenging but we did it the stadium was not only the largest in india but had been the second largest in the world at that point of time it could hold 15 lakh spectatorsthe stadium was thrown open in 1984 minus the athletics track floodlights roof electronic scoreboard and cantilever roof for the jawaharlal nehru international gold cup it was an instant success having registered full capacityit was after the initial success that phase ii of construction began while building the stadium a horrific memory played in a neverending loop in sens head the stampede after an east bengalmohun bagan match in 1980 at the eden gardens when 16 supporters were killed trying to leave through the narrow exits we had planned to make the stadium on international standards and geom etry and thus had 36 vomitoria through which the entire stadium could be evacuated in 10 minutes without any chaos during match days we found the evacuation took only seven minutes he saysas construction began and there was a fresh funds inflow a digital scoreboard was brought from hungary it had to be enormous since the stadium was so big the test was for the person