OB's Test Match Blog - Bangladesh - Test Two - Day One

It was raining last night when I pulled the curtains in my room, it was raining when I opened them at 6.30 this morning. The forecast was for rain, and it was right! In fact the forecast is for two more days of rain. Might be a tough one to win this one! But who knows what can happen.

So, the days play has been called of, we had lunch at the ground and returned to the hotel. An afternoon of very little. Times like this one can get very bored. And at time like this there isn't much to write about.

So... A quick run down on on what happens in a changing room when it rains. Well, actually not to much different to a club changing room. There's always a 'card school' that heads to the lunch room to play. Six handed euka today. That's not my bag, as I'm not to flash at cards, so tend to stay away; and anyways, the stakes are a little high for me sometimes! Then there are the 'ball gamers.' Kicking, hitting, passing, whatever a ball, or whatever, type around the changing room. Might be tennis over the physio's table with a football, or '4 square' with a rugby ball, 'keepie uppies' with a rugby ball... just whatever ball is on hand and whatever game is first thought of. Can get quite competitive, noisy and a touch distracting to us 'book readers.' Today there was four book readers. I'll let you work that out for yourselves. Balls all over the place makes keeping the nose in the book a little dangerous. So the 'ball gamers' went through to the bathroom area (which just happens to be as big as the changing room area). Plenty of room for them to play.

I have now finished my book. Which is a little concerning, as, as I said, rain is forecast and I'm done with my book. Now, what normally happens is we would swap books. But a quick glance around the room revealed that no one else is even close to the end of theirs. I'm in trouble. There is only so much of the Bangladesh newspaper I can read.

As you know we are in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and the City of Mosques. Dhaka is where all cars come to die. The bus's, well, they've already died. The cars are in such bad nick that I just would not ride in over 50% of them. I guess because of Dhaka's geographic location, not to many new cars arrive here. It's one of the few capitals in the world that doesn't have an obvious way of good getting there easily, eg. a port. Well, it does have a port, but it's up a couple of rivers, a long way from the coast. So, I'm guessing the cars that get here have either come in through the main port in Chittagong or in through India. That's once they've past there 'best by' dates in those respective places. Roads are a shambles, traffic is a nightmare. A city of 12 million all trying to move at the same time. Cycle rickshaws and auto rickshaws going the wrong way on the roads don't help either.

As I have said, we're pretty much confined to the hotel. Stimuli to things out of the norm are high. We meet for coffee. Now 'coffee' is adjective. But on tour, 'coffee' is a verb. It is something that we do. So, we were doing 'coffee' the other morning, on our day off. I'm sitting a couple of tables away on the phone to the folks back home, when a 6/10 western (white) woman, who was sitting at the table next to me, gets up and walks away. Now, remember we have been in Bangladesh for a month and there are not so many tourists here, so not that many times we see 'western' people, let alone women. I watched all the lads heads turn to look. All in unison, as if, all controlled by the same remote. And she was only a 6/10. A month away from 'the norm', and the 6 becomes closer to a 9! A strange phenomenon!

Play, tomorrow and for the rest of the match, is now due to start half an hour earlier, and finish half an hour later to make up for lost time. That means leaving the hotel at 7.15 in the morning, and being out to start warm ups at 7.45am. It's a bit strange thinking about 'switching on' for a Test match at 0745.

The rest of the afternoon to now do.... well, nothing with!!

Hope all is well, where ever you are reading this!

OB