Space invaders

Chris Read - and friends - experience the congestion in Dhaka © Getty Images

With more than 130 million people squeezed into a country that is roughly the size of England and Wales, the problem of space in Bangladesh is all too apparent, even when assessed from the other side of the world. Seeing is believing, however, and as our plane descended through the clouds to prepare to land at Dhaka Airport, the absurdity of Bangladesh's situation became all too apparent.

Acre upon acre of apparently habitable land had been drowned by unruly muddy rivers that had long since burst their banks and showed no sign of handing over their spoils. Brownish grey meandered through and across vivid green, offset by the occasional orange smear of a claypit. We approached from the north, so there was not even any sign of the urban sprawl of Dhaka that lay ahead of us. It was left to Paul Collingwood to express the sentiments on everyone's lips. "If they've got any cricket grounds," he said on arrival, "they must be floating ones."

If Collingwood was speaking in jest, he was not entirely inaccurate. At Dhaka's Bangabandhu Stadium, the soggy home of English cricket for the next three weeks, the turf within the stadium had been irrigated and elevated to twice the normal height and lushness. Meanwhile, the stadium itself seemed to be floating on a seething mass of humanity.

The Bangabandhu hosted its first Test in January 1955, in the days of East Pakistan, and so predates the creation of Bangladesh by a good 16 years. At the time of independence in 1971, Dhaka's population was little more than one million. It has since exploded, by some estimates, to a figure nearer 30 times that figure. Naturally, given its age, the stadium now sits at the hub of the city, and every day, a teeming multitude throngs its outer perimeter.

This in itself is not unusual, especially on the subcontinent where cricket grounds form a natural centre of attention. But Dhaka is different. Like a galleon shipwrecked on a coral reef, the stadium - from the outside at least - has become so incorporated into the daily hustle and bustle that it is barely recognisable for what it is.

The inner walls have become the home of innumerable electronics shops, with all manner of fancy gadgets for sale. The outer pillars, which prop up the overhanging concrete stands, provide inadequate shelter for some of Dhaka's legions of dispossessed - street children who huddle for warmth and occasionally tug at your sleeve for some spare change, and ragged women who sell thimbles of chai for the same purpose. It is quite a contrast to the more prosaic (post-independence) concrete bowl that makes up the National Hockey stadium, not more than 100 yards down the road.

The competition for space continues on the concourse in front of the ground. Dhaka traffic, which has developed its own peculiar - and highly effective - dynamic, is not concerned with such niceties as brakes and signalling. Instead, it is a free-for-all, in which the horn (a much underused weapon in the West) is often the difference between a stunning overtaking manoeuvre and a messy pile-up. The concourse, though, is the domain of Dhaka's signature sight - those wonderfully decorated bicycle rickshaws, which flutter in and out of each other's paths like giant (tinkling) butterflies.

It hardly seems justifiable, in a city where land comes at such a premium, that such a large area can be put aside for playing. But, on a non-match day at least, the sanctity of the ground is maintained with the minimum of effort, even though entry is as easy as walking into one of those Sony television shops. All that stood between the ground and the tunnel to the pitch was a lathi-bearing security guard who couldn't have been more than 14 years old. He sized me up for barely an instant before ushering me through with a confused shrug.

It was drippingly wet in the stadium itself, something that had been less apparent on the outside, with so many people milling around. Here, though, the entire area was policed by just two sleepy looking groundsmen, perched on a roller beneath a tarpaulin. They were destined to be sat there for quite a while. Huge quagmires had formed on the outfield, and just to step on the fringe of the pitch was to invite trench-foot.

If the rains relent, as they did for most of a muggy but pleasant day, the Bangabandhu may yet be ready to host England's first official visit in almost nine years. Even if it is not, however, the locals are sure to bustle on regardless.