‌Men’s cricket will return to the city of Vadodara after a gap of more than 15 years when India hosts New Zealand in an ODI at the newly built Kotambi Stadium in January next year. The Kiwis are scheduled to visit India for a white-ball series early next year ahead of the 2026 T20 World Cup which will be co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka.

New Zealand will start their three-match ODI series in Vadodara on January 11 next year before playing the second and third matches in Rajkot and Indore on January 14 and 18, respectively. The ODI series will be followed by the five-match T20I leg from January 21 with the matches to be played in Nagpur, Raipur, Guwahati, Visakhapatnam and Thiruvananthapuram.

With the T20 World Cup scheduled in February-March next year, the T20Is will help both sides in their build-up towards the marquee event with hosts India trying to become the first side to win the campaign at home and also to defend their crown, won in the West Indies in 2024.

Kotambi Stadium will become the second venue in Vadodara, after the Reliance Stadium and the fourth in Gujarat, to host an international men’s cricket game. The Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad and the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot are the other international cricket venues in the state to have already conducted an international cricket match.

It will be a long-awaited return of the game of cricket for the fans in Vadodara after Reliance Stadium hosted an ODI game between the same two sides in 2010 with the hosts beating the Kiwis convincingly by nine wickets then. The current Indian head coach Gautam Gambhir and former captain Virat Kohli, who is still part of the ODI side, played key roles in India’s victory in that game. 

With Kotambi Stadium already hosting three women’s ODIs between India and West Indies in December last year and another six T20 games in the Women’s Premier League, the awarding of a men’s ODI seems a natural progression.