We arrived just after lunch on the third day of the 2nd test between the home team and the visitors New Zealand, after been taken by the Tuk-tuk driver to the football stadium first, then having the fare doubled to now take us to the cricket stadium that we ask for in the first place, we were ushered into the visitors stand with all the other white faces. Some New Zealand supporters and many like us just wanting to see a game while on holiday on the island, we took up our places on seats of wooden garden furniture of slatted benches, with a fine breeze blowing off the field and a great view of the action, something that would be more like a county game than an international test match anywhere else.
Sri lanka were in a tight spot on 114 for 5 with the visitors tightening the screws to try to make the home side follow on, the visitors with a healthy first innings score of over 400 runs, the only hope the home side has is to bat out the day and hope the heat of 30 degrees Celsius would get to the fielding side.
I was there with Sarah, a 21 year old medical student from Sheffield Uni training to become a doctor, she had decided to take a year out and see a little of the world after her second year. We were swapping places as she only had one day left before returning to the UK and I had flew in from the UK a day ago. We were staying in the same guest house and had decided to find the cricket together with her teaching me some of the tricks she had picked up on her month long stay on the island.
The batting was slow going as the hosts struggled with what looked like a lively wicket and after the 2hrs that we were there the away crowd only had 1 wicket to cheer about, with the hosts managing to add 30 runs to there total. The real entertainment was being supplied by a lone home supporter in late 50's to early 60's who stood dressed head to toe in the Sri Lankan colours waving the national flag and issuing commands to the batsman, "hey batsman, stay in there, if you don't stay in there, you go out." and a mixture of other one liners he had picked up over the years of mingling with the touring supporters.
To add a little excitement a New Zealand fan persuaded him to sing a song for the crowd, he obliged but only after receiving a round of applause before starting, and then started his rendition of "Micheal row the boat to shore, hellelula" waling that verse over and over some 20 times that had even the dogs holding their ears, while the crowd clapped the drum roll and roared with laughter, even the players were looking around at what was going on as they could hear the commotion from the field.
By the time tea came Sarah and I decided to leave and go for a walk around town, expecting the last session to be awfully slow and painful to watch, and even the one liners had being repeated enough times to have lost their effect, which turned out to be a wise idea after checking the scores that night to see that no further wickets fell and not many runs were added to the total.
The first tuk-tuk we tried wanted 400 rupees to take us into town, but we found a metered one just after that did the trip for 120 rupees, that made up for the extra we had spent getting there. Being a religious holiday everything was closed so we just meander through the streets taking in the sites. Before long a police motorcyclists pulled up along side us for a chat, the usual, "where you from", "Kallis", "are you two married", "why not" then on to the story of them being very poor, we shrugged and said our polite farewell's and marched on, we hadn't got 50 yards before the next police motorcyclist pulled up next to us with the same line of questioning. We couldn't stop laughing afterwards about it as we carried on our tour of the city wondering what would happen next.
Lucky enough we made it back to Negombo beach just after dark in one piece, with still money left in our pockets and stories to tell the other residents of the guest house over dinner.
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