The much-anticipated ‘Cricket Celebrates Mujib 100’ concert will be held at Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium in Mirpur of the capital today to mark the birth centenary of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Security has been beefed up in and around the concert venue where Oscar-winning musician AR Rahman will perform along with local popular singer Momtaz Begum and famous band Miles.

Noted artistes of the country will also perform at the concert organised by Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) in association with Bashundhara Group.

Bashundhara Group is the main sponsor of the mega event while Walton and Orion Group are also engaged as sponsors in different capacities.

The BCB has completed all the preparations with the stage of the concert built on a large part of the stadium with 10,000 seating arrangement in front of the stage.

NEW24 will telecast the programme live from the venue, which is scheduled to start at 06:00pm (BST).

“There will be state-level security as our honourable PM Sheikh Hasina is expected to grace the programme,” BCB Director Ismail Haider Mallick told reporters on Monday.

“The security is much higher than what we had during an international series and the national security agencies have been working round the clock to make sure everything moves smoothly,” he added.

The BCB was scheduled to host the concert in March 2020 with AR Rahman while they were also supposed to hold two T20Is between Asia XI and World XI but the plan had to be shelved due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We planned to host those matches but it had to be shelved due to corona and now we have an opportunity to arrange the concert,” Mallick said.

Meanwhile, AR Rahman, who arrived in Dhaka along with more than one hundred of his associates by a chartered flight on Sunday, had a rehearsal at the stadium on Monday evening.

The Indian maestro is expected to sing 35 songs that also include the two songs that he composed to mark the occasion during the three-hour show.

Tickets, priced in the range of Tk 1,000 to 10,000, for the mega concert, were available at Shaheed Suhrawardi Indoor Stadium in Mirpur from Monday. Tickets are being sold in three categories.

However, it hardly managed to create any hype due to the pricing of the tickets.

Club House tickets are priced at Tk 1,000 (bronze) while the on ground tickets are priced at Tk 5,000 (gold) and TK 10,000 (platinum) respectively.

Mallick has also thanked the sponsors for coming forward for the event and informed that the BCB hardly had to spend any money for organising the gala event.

“The sponsors are bearing the maximum expenses and we’re very thankful to them,” he said.

Earlier, AR Rahman performed in a concert organised by the BCB before the 2014 T20 World Cup in Dhaka.