Private Bhubaneswar museum lures cricket fans across ages in run-up to India-Pakistan T20 World Cup match

Bhubaneswar: As India gears up to face Pakistan in the much-anticipated T20 World Cup match on Sunday, a tiny room tucked inside a quiet neighbourhood in Bhubaneswar has turned into a cauldron of nostalgia, pride and cricketing emotion.For city-based collector and cricket enthusiast Samaranjan Mohanty, this World Cup is not just another tournament. It is a moment to relive decades of memories preserved lovingly in his private museum.With India and Sri Lanka jointly hosting this edition of the T20 Cricket World Cup, footfall at the museum has suddenly increased — schoolchildren and young fans visiting with an eagerness to catch a glimpse of a lifetime’s worth of collected cricket history.Spread across shelves and glass cases, Samaranjan’s museum houses an astonishing range of items — from international and IPL match tickets to special postal covers featuring legends such as Dhoni, Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Anil Kumble and Kapil Dev.Moreover, the collection boasts postage stamps of icons from India and abroad such as Sachin Tendulkar, CK Naidu, Vijay Merchant, Deodhar, Vinoo Mankad, Ranjit Singh, Sunil Gavaskar, Vivian Richards, Ian Botham and Muttiah Muralitharan.

The museum has coins commemorating cricket milestones, including Sri Lanka’s 1996 World Cup triumph, Chaminda Vaas’s bowling action, Australia’s T20 World Cup coin and a Barbados currency with Frank Worrell’s portrait.It also has special edition covers celebrating cricket milestones like Tendulkar’s 200th Test, Champions Trophy editions, the first ICC T20 World Cup in 2007 and biographies of cricketers from around the world, many of them signed by the players themselves.For Samaranjan, each item carries a story. “Every stamp, every coin, every match ticket is a moment frozen in time,” said the collector, adding that people watch matches and forget them but he wanted to preserve them.With just hours left for the India-Pakistan match, Samaranjan opened a cheer corner inside the museum, a vibrant space lined with India’s stamps and match tickets from previous Indo-Pak encounters.“When India plays Pakistan, every fan becomes a curator of memories. I am just showing mine to bring good luck to the team,” he said. He even put up his prized possession at the centre: a special cover commemorating India’s T20 World Cup win in 2007.“When my visitors smile looking at these stamps or old tickets, I feel like I am reliving the game. If my collection can add even a little joy before the India-Pakistan match, that is my way of cheering for the team,” he said.