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SERIES SALAD

SHAHIDUL ISLAM, Chittagong
Surprise, surprise the rain gods were busy somewhere else. And the second Test between Bangladesh and England got off to a picture perfect start at MA Aziz Stadium here yesterday.
It was a clear blue sky over the port city which only 24 hours earlier had been dreading the worst. And once again who should they blame but the weathermen for getting the prediction wrong.
To everybody's relief the match started on time under brilliant sunshine and there was not a drop of rain till stumps. Obviously the organisers must be smiling now at the way the game progressed without a hitch.
The deep depression ominously centering at the Bay had moved away and gradually weakened in the pro-
cess.
So, there is no chance of any major thunderstorm in the next few days.
"Even if the rain falls it might not be enough to disrupt the game for the next couple of days," said a spokesman for the local met office.
Interestingly, this is the first time that the rain, which followed England ever since their arrival in Dhaka on October 8, spared them here.
TEST ESCAPES OUTAGE
While England may have left behind the rain, nobody could have predicted that another mishap was in the pipeline.
Cricket followers of the country woke to watch Khaled Mahmud's men in action against England at the port city. But they were struck by a major power-failure that gripped the nation right at the start of play. The power surge tripped 21 out of 23 national sub-stations. The impact of the loss of power was felt at the venue itself as all air-coolers failed to go on.
However, power supply was restored at the venue three hours after the outage thanks to an alternative source.
"It is a national outage. But we restored power supply partially through the Kaptai station to make sure the Test match went on uninterrupted," said Rafiqul Alam, deputy general manager of power grid company of Bangladesh (PGCB) in Chittagong.
BOOMING TICKET SALES
Ticket sales were disappointing only the previous day. But amazingly it picked up on Wednesday as cricket fans rushed towards the second Test venue of the country from all parts of the port city.
The pavilion, the Western and Eastern galleries were packed to capacity as the second Test against England moved to lunch on the opening day.
"The crowd's response has been amazing and we are very happy," said a smiling Jahangir, who operates one of the ticket booths at the stadium. But Jahangir and his colleagues spent a lazy day on Tuesday because there were hardly any advance ticket sales.
The change of heart of the knowledgeable Chittagonians was mainly due to the good weather that has transformed the busy city.