MCA to Auction Wankhede Stadium Seats Where Ball Landed After MS Dhoni Hit The Winning Six in 2011 ODI World Cup Final

The Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) has decided to auction the seats at the Wankhede Stadium on which the ball landed after legendary India captain MS Dhoni struck the 2011 ODI World Cup winning six against Sri Lanka.

In April this year, MCA had invited Dhoni to inaugurate a victory memorial built at the site of that iconic six. Five chairs will be removed from the pavilion for this.

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The fund collected from the auction will serve as scholarships to the emerging players, MCA said.

“To eternalize the glory of this moment, the two seats where the ball landed at the Wankhede Stadium after MS Dhoni struck the ICC World Cup 2011 winning six will be auctioned by the MCA,” the cricket association posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday.

“The funds collected from this auction will be utilised to provide scholarships to emerging players,” it added.

India became the first team to life the ODI World Cup at home in 2011. Dhoni thus  became the second captain from his country after Kapil Dev to win the title.

While the moment might be one of the most memorable in Indian cricket history, for Dhoni, that six wasn’t the winning moment as he revealed during a conversation with his former Chennai Super Kings teammate Michael Hussey.

“The best feeling was 15-20 minutes (before the winning moment). We didn’t need a lot of runs, the partnership was well-placed, there was a lot of dew. And the stadium started to sing Vande Mataram. That atmosphere I feel is very difficult to recreate – maybe in this (2023) World Cup, there is a similar scenario, once the stadium, the fans start contributing. You know, it’s a very difficult (atmosphere) one to replicate. But it can only be replicated if the occasion is similar to that (in 2011) and there are like 40, 50 or 60,000 people who are singing,” Dhoni had said earlier this year.