Even in the hinterlands of the hill city of Kandy, excitement has built over their hosting of one of the world’s great sporting encounters.
It is not an unassuming city. The elites here will deride the capital as a crime-ridden, sweat-festival, on account of Kandy and its surrounds being a whole 500 metres higher than Colombo, and supposedly superior for its having resisted colonialism for three centuries longer than the coasts of Sri Lanka. The city has also just this week finished hosting the Esala Perahera – the most glittering Buddhist procession on the island, which starts from the Palace of the last King of the island. Do not trifle with this place.
But for this game, the PCB has released lower-cost tickets to locals, particularly in the very popular grass banks at Pallekele. This works out to almost the same price (roughly LKR 1500 – Approx USD 5) as tickets for Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka. But perhaps helped by the fact that the India v Pakistan match is on a Saturday, these tickets are in greater demand.
On the field, while the teams trained, it felt pretty low key. It has often been said that two nations that share so much (language, culture, food) should not be so irredeemably opposed. And on the eve of this big match, both India and Pakistan shared a desire to train under lights. Pallekele had the facilities to have them both in at the same time, and so, Shaheen Afridi and Babar Azam were running through their warm-ups and later fielding drills, less than 50 metres away from where Mohammad Siraj was bowling bouncers to Virat Kohli.
The Pakistan coaching staff was cracking jokes with their players. Morne Morkel, Pakistan’s bowling coach, ran in off a few steps to bowl mostly rank off-side wides to the batter in the centre net. In the nets area beside the ground, Babar paused to watch every time Suryakumar Yadav or Shreyas Iyer, batting three nets away, sounded like they middled a ball.
Sometimes fireworks let off in the western reaches of Amritsar can been seen in east Lahore.
In the next week, BCCI officials are scheduled to visit Pakistan. PCB officials are set to be at the border to meet them. This is the way plans stand for now. But this is South Asia. Calls from high-ranking ministers happen. Nationalist sentiments frequently trump meaningful reaching out.
On the field, it is 11 guys playing cricket against 11 other guys. The tandem practice session at Pallekele ended with Shadab Khan and Mohammad Rizwan being greeted by Kohli at the top of the steps, just by the dressing rooms. Shadab and Kohli stopped to speak.
At the press conferences, in a small room near the nets, where dozens of sweaty media dudes (it was almost all dudes) gathered to vacuum up every word said by the captain of each team, Rohit Sharma said this: “They are a very good team, last few years they’ve done really well, whether it’s at the T20 World Cup or in the 50-over format. No team becomes No. 1 just like that. Pakistan has worked hard a lot to get there, looks like a unit. We’ll have a good challenge to play against them.”
In the past, Babar has been equally generous to India’s cricketers. Though both teams are no doubt aware of the immensity of the occasion, on this neutral ground, there seemed to be a straightforward, no-big-drama, going-through-the-motions vibe to their preparation.
When the game goes live on Saturday, perhaps hundreds of millions will be watching. In the stands will be tens of thousands, whose alliegances may be split (Sri Lankans are historically supporters of Pakistan, but have lately grown fond of India as well, though this has often been when India are playing teams outside South Asia).
Perhaps because of its airs, Kandy seems an appropriate place to host this match. A fitting seat of kings.
Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo’s Sri Lanka correspondent. @afidelf
