Incontinent on the Subcontinent: ICC CRICKET WORLD CUP 2011 - SRI LANKA V AUSTRALIA, PREMADASA STADIUM COLOMBO

Coming to this match, was what bought us to beautiful Sri Lanka.

We rose early (our body clocks are struggling, SL is 5.5 hours behind Australia. Our body clocks are on Australian time, still) and headed down to the beach for a walk and a cup of tea. It was relatively early and the beach was packed with people doing old school calisthenics and jogging! The view was really quite impressive, with the stunning beach, fishermen selling that mornings fresh catch and a beautiful new day.

Early morning on Mount Lavinia Beach

Fresh fish!

As a rule Andrew doesn't really get excited about much, he's much too level headed and calm. However this match was going to be a rare opportunity for him to get fired up! From advice given to us by our Sri Lankan friends, we left our accommodation and wandered up to the local supermarket to stock up on supplies so we could leave for the game early. We grabbed a three-wheeler and for 1000 rupees ($10AUD) he drove us the hour long journey to Premadasa Stadium. We had seen the revamped stadium on TV back home during the earlier World Cup matches and knew it to be fairly big.

When we arrived we took our coupon to collect our pre-purchased tickets (this game was a sell out and scalpers were apparently selling 'tickets' for the equivalent of $1500AUD). Our tickets cost us 50 rupees each - so $0.50AUD. Bargain!

After the smooth process of collecting the tickets and being advised we had 'bad seats' because we were in the concrete stands with the Sri Lankans, we were shepherded through what looked like cattle gates and we were separated, as I had to go in the Women line and Andrew went with the other men. I've never seen so much security before in my life. If a man with an AK47 tells you to go in one direction, away from your spouse, it's probably a safe bet that you should. I could see Andrew ahead of my place in the women's line and he was being frisked by security, and when I looked ahead to where I was going I could see I was being sent into a 'tent' of sorts.

As it turns out, they decided women should have a bit more privacy when being frisked, than the men did. Now, when I say frisked, I should probably point out that by the time I had my go, it wasn't more like a frisk but more like a complete and utter grope-fest. Obviously they were women soldiers who were doing the 'frisking' but oh, my, gosh. They spread my legs apart, went straight to the crotch area and had a good ole rub of the boobs. It was all over quite quickly and Andrew said the look on my face when I came out of the touchy-tent was pure gold. He also said every other woman had the exact same look. 50 cents for a cricket ticket and a good old fashion feeling up wasn't too bad in value, I think! We then walked towards the section of the stadium where we were sitting but not before being bailed up by a South African television crew who interviewed us on our thoughts of the game! Needless to say after being felt up by some women, we had also made our debut of South African TV. Could the day get any better?

After another security check point we managed to get to the stands and grab our places. There were already tonnes of people there, and there were still 2.5 hours before the match started! Very different to back in Australia! We were obviously a bit of an attraction as there were absolutely NO other Australians sitting in our area and eventually some fantastic Sri Lankan guys came and sat with us and became our new friends. We talked a lot of cricket, we gave them some of those cute squeezy koala things (which they absolutely treasured) and posed for some photos together. Shortly after this a beautiful Sri Lankan woman wearing the cricket team colours (she couldn't have been more than 25 years old) came down and sat next to me and in an Australian accent asked me where I was from! We got chatting and it turns out she lives in Sydney now but had timed her trip home to get married (at the stunning Mount Lavinia Hotel) to coincide with this cricket match. See, I told you they are cricket tragics!

Us at the game

Flag swapping

The atmosphere at a cricket match in this country is an experience in itself. I had watched enough cricket on TV to realise this is not just a game of cricket. This is an outright party experience! The music was so loud we could barely speak and as the first ball of the game was drawing nearer the crowd seemed to buzz with excitement. People were dancing, singing and having a blast. Over the pumping music, they began a call of prayer. If you have never heard this before, you are really missing out. Sri Lanka has a large population of muslims, so multiple times during the day you will hear the call to prayer begin. I realise the world has many views and opinions on muslims, obviously some of which has been generated by those that do the wrong thing in the name of their religion and I won't start to preach any opinions here, only an observation. Which is that we have now met many people of muslim faith in this country and they have been nothing short of kind, generous and helpful towards us. It has been a humbling experience.

The players all came out to being their warm ups and this drove the crowd even more wild. People were cheering and calling out to the players from both SL and Australia. Ricky Ponting lost the toss, and SL decided to bat. The most highly anticipated match of round 1 of the Cricket World Cup was about to begin! As we were literally the only Aussies as far as we could see, we copped some good humoured ribbing and lots of people wanted to talk to us about our team. There is a lot of respect from the Sri Lankan's about the Australian cricket team, even if we did beat them in 2007 World Cup final!

Our boys, warming up. It was 35 degrees, weren't they warm enough?

Australia opened the bowling with Brett Lee and Shaun Tait and there was a bit of a heated exchange between Tait and one of the Sri Lankan batsmen, which resulted in a wicket on the next ball! What a start!

I won't go in to a commentary on the game, but both teams were going really well. Our bowlers weren't doing too bad and the SL batsmen were playing well. Once Sangakarra took to the field, you could tell he was really going to open the game up and put some runs on the board for the Sri Lankans. The wicket was showing some impressive turn, and the Australian's would have really felt the full force of the impressive Sri Lankan bowling attack, when it came time for us to bat.

The sun started to be eaten up by clouds and it got visibly darker as each minute passed. Andrew said to me "I think we're going to get some rain!". Rain it did! After 32 overs had passed the heavens opened up. Opened up suggests rain. What we experienced was incredible. So heavy that in the time it took to get the massive covers out on the ground they were already cumbersome with the weight of the water on them. There were the most incredibly close lightning strikes, but noone seemed to mind, however it was fantastic viewing for me!

People started to push backwards in the stadium to escape the rain and at one point we literally thought we were going to get crushed - I was being pushed backwards and couldn't go anywhere and Andrew had to step in and get people to realise they were crushing me! People were not trying to hurt one another, but it seemed like they didn't realise there was nowhere else for the people behind them to go. Personal space was nil. The rain continued to bucket down and I guess most of the people in front of us (we were 3 rows back) decided they couldn't stay in that kind of rain for much longer, and they left. This left a really large area in front of us, all the way to the field empty. It was great to have some space to breathe again! We donned our $3 Kmart rain ponchos and figured there was nothing left to do but wait in the hope the game might resume. Andrew decided to get our flag and in a very Cathy-Freeman-Sydney-Olympics-fashion sans grace, ran around the ground in our general area! He was cheered loudly and people absolutely loved it! I was busy chatting to someone otherwise I would have filmed the whole thing - it was a classic, and very un-Andrew like!

Realising we were stubborn bloody Aussies, the SL fans around us decided to come and have a chat. We got talking to tonnes of people who all wanted to know our thoughts on cricket and I got chatting to many guys about who we thought would win the World Cup. People liked my joke that I thought Canada was in with a chance, hehe. Sorry Canada. Why not bring Andrew on as a coach (he is Cricket Australia certified, after all) and perhaps you could improve your chances whilst offering us the chance to live in your beautiful country. Call me, we'll talk details!

After waiting 2 hours in the pouring rain, it was evident by the amount of water sitting on the ground and the announcement made over the loud speakers about localised flooding around the stadium, the game was going to have be abandoned. It was disappointing, as we had travelled here just for this one match, however coupled with the dancing, singing and overall atmosphere at the game, it was an incredible thing to experience regardless of the actual game.

We managed to get out of the stadium and grab a three-wheeler and head back to Mount Lavinia where we went to a seafood restaurant about 150m from our accommodation and enjoyed a relaxing seafood dinner. Overall it was a great day, albeit soggy!