Rehan Fernando is excited during a 20-minute drive to the Premadasa \u2014 not precisely by the thoughts of an India vs Pakistan match that keeps millions of fans busy across the stadium, living rooms, pubs and social media.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am going to get a lot of Uber requests on Sunday for stadium drop-offs and pick-ups. Need to keep Suzuki Every fuelled and ready for the rush hours,\u201d Fernando sing-songs.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old, a father of two, knows that Sunday alone can add substantially to his wallet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard tickets have been sold out. Who knows! Maybe I will get enough money to do some pending repair works.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fernando\u2019s words are, in fact, a reflection of the general mood in Sri Lanka. For many, the India vs Pakistan match, which they don\u2019t have any direct connection with, is a money spinner.<\/p>\n
Fernando is not alone either. The hopes of a financial windfall waft across sections of Lankan society.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s move to the posh Park Street Mews \u2014 the heartbeat of Colombo evenings and nights.<\/p>\n
A short drive to the bustling food street through Kynsey Mawatha (road) past the De Soysa circle shows all things good about Colombo.<\/p>\n
Glitzy buildings, wide and clean roads, showrooms of super luxury cars, outlets of exclusive suitings, fine dine restaurants \u2014 the 2km trip easily fits Colombo\u2019s tag as a cosmopolitan port city.<\/p>\n
It leads to a wide street filled with pubs and bistros, but Indian and Pakistani visitors have outnumbered the locals on a vibe Saturday night that runs till 2 am.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are struggling to find seats for our customers. We generally get good footfalls on weekends, but we have not expected this kind of numbers,\u201d says Michael Amarasiri, store manager of a well-known waterhole in the city.<\/p>\n
Amarasiri has a deeper involvement with the Sunday blockbuster. His brother-in-law runs a travel company here, and the stop-start nature of the match had put them in a quandary.<\/p>\n
\u201cTill last week, we were unsure whether the match would happen or not. We have also received some requests to cancel the room bookings after Pakistan announced its decision to boycott this match.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut once it was decided to get on with the match, we received calls to revive the cancelled room bookings, and also more fans from India – particularly from Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru – have approached us for two-night or even one-night stays,\u201d says Amarasiri.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, we cannot entertain everyone but we also have tried to link with small-time tour operators and individuals who are giving houses on rent to accommodate as many requests as possible. We also have found out that the airfare has really gone through the roof in the last couple of days,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe we can have more India vs Pakistan matches in Colombo. Why don\u2019t we have a bilateral series between them here?\u201d Amarasiri chuckles.<\/p>\n
But these are people from organised sectors. The local industry is also ready to make hay on the weekend.<\/p>\n
The Khettarama road is now teeming with local vendors selling Indian and Pakistani jerseys, hats, flags, young men roaming around with ink to print erasable tattoos, temporary stalls to give lemonade, fruit juice and coconut water to fans standing in queue under the beaming Lankan sun.<\/p>\n
Even the cricketers feel it themselves. Pakistan skipper Salman Ali Agha described it well.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have done at least 4-5 tours of Sri Lanka. I have seen the best people of my life here. They are very nice people and their hospitality is very good. So we are enjoying our time here,\u201d said Salman. So do the fans and the Sri Lankan economy.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rehan Fernando is excited during a 20-minute drive to the Premadasa \u2014 not precisely by the thoughts of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45,49,48,46,7098],"class_list":{"0":"post-476712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-sri-lanka"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}