Sri Lanka’s travel travails in T20 World Cup

Sri Lanka will travel a total if 8097 kilometres during the first round of the T20 World Cup  

• Will travel a total of 8097 kilometres in first round

The talking point in the ongoing T20 World Cup is the scheduling of venues at matches in the group stage. Whereas some teams have the benefit of playing the majority of their matches at one venue, others like Sri Lanka have been given four different venues for their four group games.

Only one other team are in the same boat – the Netherlands.

Sri Lanka spinner Maheesh Theekshana complained of the tough hand his team has been dealt with after the recent match against South Africa which Sri Lanka lost by six wickets at New York on a drop-in pitch which is turning out to be a nightmare for batsmen.  

Among all the teams, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Scotland, and Bangladesh are the only ones who are scheduled to change base four times from the start of the warm-ups till the end of the first round.

In terms of distance, Bangladesh are the busiest team, scheduled to travel 9,921 km in the following order: Dallas – New York – Dallas – New York – Kingstown. The next busiest are Sri Lanka, who played both their warm-up games at Lauderhill, but will be travelling across four venues for the first round games, totalling a distance of 8,097 km. The Netherlands are scheduled to travel 7,380 km, while Scotland, despite having to travel only 1,242 km, will need to change base four times in the following order: Tarouba – Port of Spain – Bridgetown – North Sound – Gros Islet.

In comparison, India, South Africa, New Zealand, and England are the only teams at the 2024 T20 World Cup that need to change base just once. All of them except India played no warm-up games before the tournament, while India played one, meaning they will need to take only one flight between five games.