Wankhede Stadium

Tucked into a grid of quiet streets a few blocks behind Marine Drive, Wankhede Stadium is the ground that Mumbai built for itself. It went up in the mid-1970s, when the Mumbai Cricket Association decided it needed a home of its own rather than borrowing the older Brabourne Stadium a short walk away, and the commission went to the Mumbai architect Shashi Prabhu.

• The first Test match was played here in the 1974-75 season, and within a generation the ground had displaced its neighbour as the city's main cricket stage.
• It is a working sports venue rather than a museum piece, so for most of the year it simply sits there, tall and pale, at the end of an ordinary Churchgate street.
• The architecture is worth the detour even if you never see a ball bowled.
• The original stadium was a straightforward tiered concrete bowl with view-blocking pillars; the remodelling completed ahead of the 2011 World Cup stripped those out and replaced the roofline with a light, translucent fabric canopy carried on steel arms that cantilever out over the stands, so the seating below is uninterrupted.
• Capacity dropped — to somewhere around thirty-three thousand — but sightlines improved dramatically, and the canopy's shallow curve reads from the street as a single long ribbon floating above the concrete.
• In a precinct otherwise defined by Art Deco apartment blocks and colonial-era Gothic, it is the one confidently contemporary structure.
• Access is the thing to plan around.
• This is not a monument with a ticket window and a turnstile for sightseers: the ground opens to spectators on match days and is otherwise closed to casual visitors, so most travellers experience it from outside, walking the perimeter along Vinoo Mankad Road and D Road where the stands and the canopy edge are clearly visible.
• Stands named for Vijay Merchant, Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar ring the field inside.
• It combines naturally with the Oval Maidan, the Churchgate Art Deco stretch and the Marine Drive seafront, all within fifteen minutes on foot, and the whole walk is flat and easy.
• Mumbai is a seafood city, but the lanes behind Churchgate also hold one of India's strongest vegetarian eating cultures, so a pure-veg meal is straightforward here if you read the board before you sit down.
• Walk five to ten minutes east into the Churchgate and Fort lanes and you will find old-style Gujarati thali houses and Udupi-run 'udipi' restaurants whose kitchens are vegetarian end to end — look for the pure-veg sign at the door and confirm at the counter, because a neighbour on the same block may not be.
• Snack carts along Veer Nariman Road turn out vada pav, pav bhaji and grilled sandwiches through the day; ask before ordering, since egg preparations are common on the same stretch.
• About two kilometres north along the seafront, the chaat stalls at Girgaum Chowpatty make a good evening detour for bhelpuri and pani puri.