Trail of the Lion King

Our third sporting event of the day was the game that the trip had originally been planned around. It was a T20 international between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and required another tuk-tuk ride, this time twenty minutes or so to the R. Premesada stadium.

It was busy outside, with reports of a sellout and our driver dropped us a few minutes walk away. It wasn’t much of a tourist area, with the streets full of shops doing bike repairs, selling car parts and even a tinker. I don’t remember what a tinker does, but should I ever need any tinking I now know where to go.

Security was tight, as you might expect when a state of emergency had been declared three days earlier. We passed through two security checkpoints and  a body scanner before doing a lap of the stadium to find our entrance for the grandstand. We had posh tickets, bought online for five thousand rupees a few weeks earlier and there was a lift to take us up to our upper level.

I’d selected row A, which was fine until people started standing at the railings. Initially I was able to wave them out of our line of vision but sensing a losing battle we soon moved backwards to an area of empty seats that gave a much better view. Beer was on sale for under a quid and there was a selection of chicken, burgers and chips available. I had plenty of everything.

Whist there were empty seats in our section and the stands either side, the big curved stand opposite looked full. Most people appeared to be standing in those areas and all were making plenty of noise. The section we were in was definitely the best for sitting quietly.

The game was part of a three team tournament  that also involved India and, I think, was intended to celebrate an independence anniversary. Sri Lanka batted well and comfortably went along at ten an over to finish on 214.

That score should really have been enough, particularly as Bangladesh has a poor record against their hosts in this format, winning only two of the the previous nine encounters. The visitors went at it well though, initially scoring at twelve an over and always seeming to be up with the required rate.

At the death Bangladesh hit the winning runs with two balls in hand. Our tuk-tuk driver for the journey back to our Fort hotel seemed to think he had the invincibility of an armoured vehicle rather than the vulnerability of a motorbike with a box on the back. On the plus side, his reckless manoeuvres did leave a little more time for late evening drinking, something that the ongoing state of emergency or the recent law that prohibits women from consuming alcohol failed to impact upon at all.

Tags: bangladesh, R Premesada stadium, sri lanka, T20

This entry was posted on March 30, 2018 at 2:02 am and is filed under Cricket. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.