The refurbished Bangabandhu National Stadium is expected to open to public on October 18 through a charity football match between singers and actors after the National Sports Council gave green signal to Noor Creation to hold the match to raise funds for the martyrs of anti-discrimination student movement.

The professional footballers will, however, have to wait for a few more months before the NSC hands over the stadium to Bangladesh Football Federation in December following the completion of renovation work, which started in September 2021.

"As per demand from the Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF), we have already upgraded the ground by installing pop-up sprinkler system to make the ground wet. The ground is ready to host the football match," NSC's sports director and project director Shamsul Alam said yesterday.

Murad Noor, the owner of event-management firm Noor Creation, said, "Yesterday we received approval from NSC to host the match among the celebrities on October 18 but it may be deferred by a bit. Our initial thinking was to help the flood-affected people but later we thought about raising funds for July Foundation."

Since the start of the renovation work, BFF has been struggling to hold matches of Bangladesh Premier League, being forced to host most matches outside of Dhaka.

It has been learned that the NSC had to spend Tk 15 lakh more to install the pop-up sprinklers instead of the water-guns which were initially installed around the ground. Two types of grass – Royal Bengal and Bermuda -- were also planted by a company last year under the supervision of BFF, which did not take over the ground over the pop-up sprinkler system as well as some other technical issues.

"Everything is going on the right direction to end the renovation works within December even though it will take two to three months more to install the LED floodlight and we will seek two to three months' extension for only floodlight," said Alam, adding that chairs on the gallery under the new sheds and on the VIP gallery are also going on.