Cricket may no longer be the summer English sport or the sport of amateurs with so much of commercial value and highly paid professionals taking to the game.
But in Sri Lanka the name of the game is to exploit the smallest of loopholes in the law.
According to the sport’s global keeper the International Cricket Council (ICC) the law governing the size of the playing field should be between 65 and 90 yards.
Sri Lanka has chosen the smallest playing area, fit for junior schoolboys, on which to showcase international pros at the Lanka Premier League (LPL). Questions on the matter were raised when it was realised that the out-fielders had no room to run around and cut off the boundary as would have been possible on a bigger ground and there were more ones than twos, an indication that the fielders were close to the batsmen running between the wickets.
In a statement Sri Lanka Cricket said the boundary line was 70 yards and well within the ICC rules.
At the 1996 World Cup match between Sri Lanka and Kenya at Asgiriya in Kandy the home team scored 397 in 50 overs, a massive total at that time on a shortened boundary line.