Come witness Pakistan-Lanka cricket friendship in Sri Lanka
SriLankan
Holidays has unveiled a range of fabulous tour packages for Pakistani
cricket fans to witness their team’s tour of Sri Lanka in July/August
2009, continuing the extraordinary combination of close friendship and
keen competition that has sprung up between these two talented teams in
the face of adversity. Colombo’s R. Premadasa International Cricket
Stadium will host a solitary T20 match on 12th August, which will be a
virtual rematch of the T20 World Cup Final. There are also three Tests
and five One Day Internationals, all of which will be hotly contested,
as they are a continuation of the unfinished tour which ended abruptly
due to the Lahore incident. General Manager SriLankan Holidays, Amith
Sumanapala, said: "Sri Lankan cricket fans have opened their arms wide
to welcome Pakistan’s cricketers, and this is SriLankan Holidays’ way of
extending that warm and friendly hospitality to Pakistani fans too."
Sumanapala added: "The people of Sri Lanka fully supported the Sri
Lankan team travelling to Pakistan when no other country would do so,
and the Lahore incident brought Sri Lanka and Pakistan closer than ever
before. And most recently, while Sri Lankan fans dearly wanted their
team to win the T20 World Cup, most Sri Lankans agree that the Pakistani
team fully deserved the trophy after all the hardships that Pakistani
cricket has undergone." Previously in 1996, when Australia and West
Indies refused to play World Cup matches in Sri Lanka due to security
fears, a joint India-Pakistan team travelled to Colombo for a ‘friendly’
match to demonstrate that it was a safe location. Sri Lanka lost the
‘friendly,’ and then went on an undefeated run in the tournament to be
crowned World Champions, thrashing the mighty Aussies in the final in
Lahore to the delight of the Pakistani crowd. Sri Lanka is expecting a
boom in tourism following the dawn of peace in May after a 30-year civil
war. The island nation is famous for its value-for-money shopping,
palm-fringed golden beaches, friendly culture, historic ancient cities,
and value for money shopping. Then there’s the amazing diversity of
nature that allows tourists to experience the thrill of going on safari
in tropical jungles to watch herds of hundreds of elephants, as well as
deer, wild boar, foxes, crocodiles, buffalo, elusive bear and leopards,
and hundreds of different types of birds of amazing colours; and then be
up in mist-swathed mountains amid the splashing waterfalls and rich tea
plantations within a couple of hours. The First Test is at the Galle
International Cricket Stadium on the south coast from July 4-8. The
action then shifts to Colombo’s P. Saravanamuttu Stadium for the Second
Test from July 12-16, and then to the Sinhalese Sports Club for the
Third Test from July 20-24.
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