In the urban sprawl of Mumbai, kids have an awesome and surprising new place to play cricket and badminton—under a highway overpass.

Built beneath the Sector 15 Sanpada overpass in Navi Mumbai, a video of the kids playing went viral and drew the attention of other city administrators who celebrated the clever transformation of an unhappy space into one of real joy.

The overpass is enormous and over 20,000 square feet of space is available underneath. Under the tallest section, 3 courts for badminton and 1 for basketball have been built. A cricket zone with a pitch of 22 yards enclosed by a net has been created, as well as a sizable skating rink facility, running track, and yoga area.

The whole complex is painted in bright colors to beautify the space. Construction of the sports complexes began back in 2021.

Hyderabad's Municipal Administration and IT Minister K. T. Rama Rao expressed interest in replicating similar projects in his city—the fourth-largest in India—and tagged the Special Chief Secretary Arvind Kumar in a tweet, saying, "Let's get this done in a few places in Hyderabad. Looks like a nice idea."

Transformational. Let’s do this. In every city. pic.twitter.com/4GJtKoNpfr

— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) March 28, 2023

Transformational. Let's do this. In every city. pic.twitter.com/4GJtKoNpfr

"The space under most of the [overpasses] in Navi Mumbai is lying unused and taking advantage of the situation some people have encroached on them for parking vehicles and running small shops among others," Sanjay Desai, Navi Mumbai Municipal Council's city engineer told The Hindustan Times.

"Some homeless people are also staying under a few flyovers and neither we, nor the police department has any idea about their backgrounds. So to beautify the place, we have decided to develop sports infrastructure and open gyms under the flyovers."

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