Anyone seen the score?

After two matches at the SSC, Colombo’s second biggest ground following the Premadasa Stadium, it was time to take a look at another of the town’s multitude if venues. Like Antigua is said to have a beach for every day of the year, I’m sure this place can match that for cricket grounds. They are everywhere, of all shapes and sizes, and very conveniently three of them (and, as if by magic, three of four for this tournament) are within about 100 yards of each other.

So when I say I went to another ground, it certainly doesn’t mean I had to venture into the unknown – more like turn left instead of the right this morning. Colombo Cricket Club is typical of smaller grounds; one main pavilion building, a small open stand, the groundstaff's shed, the scoreboard and the press box. Now, I don't like to quibble about little issues that crop up during the day – and there haven’t been any so far this tournament – but the CCC threw up a tricky proposition.

As I wandered into the ground, trying to avoid the two team buses that were attempting, what seemed to be, logistically impossible reversing into incredibly tight spaces, I asked for directions to the media area. Sent across to the other side of the ground I meandered over the outfield, dodging the occasional stray practice ball, and admired the large traditional scoreboard. I think manual scoreboards add to the character of a ground; The Oval had the fastest operators in the west, Adelaide’s is stunning, while Sydney’s is heritage listed.

The board at CCC does not quite reach those heights, but still produces an efficient show; well at least I think it did. I can’t tell you for sure because the press box and the scoreboard are side by side (and I mean almost touching), completely facing the ground. When I noticed this a bad neck was expected by the end of the day with stretching to try and read the thing. That didn’t happen, but only because even if you lent well out of the box it still didn’t help. Having scoreboards like this is not unusual, it’s just that there is often another one on the opposite side of the ground giving basic information like the total and overs.

Not here, so the day was spent relying on the media assistants – a hardworking bunch of people who have, so far, outnumbered the actual media at most matches – to keep the stats rolling in. And they did a sterling job, especially given that this match turned out to be the tightest in the tournament so far.

In fact, the whole operation at each ground has been impressive – viewable scoreboard or not. Probably the most important guy has been the technician, who goes through what seems like an extraordinarily complicated wiring process each morning to give us phone lines (I could have sworn he’d picked up a trans-atlantic phone call today) but never fails to get us connected. Nothing is ever too much of a problem, a familiar and endearing trait from many Sri Lankans, which makes even not being able to see the score at a cricket match seem like a trivial matter.