Dambulla floodlights improved for tri-series

The floodlights at the Rangiri Dambulla Stadium, which had come in for plenty of criticism during the Asia Cup, have been revamped for the current tri-series.

"All the lamps have been replaced and the illumination levels have been increased," Ashley de Silva, Sri Lanka Cricket's head of cricket operations, said. Dambulla has eight floodlight towers, each of which has 21 bulbs. In the Asia Cup, each of those bulbs had been in the 1000-1100 watts range and were replaced with those rated between 1300 and 1400 watts for the tri-series.

Some of the players aren't entirely happy even with the new set of lights. "I think they probably need to still be up a level or two to be really good for international sport," Scott Styris said earlier in the week. "It was pretty dark out there, I guess from a playing perspective we would love it to be just a little brighter."

The intensity of the floodlights had been a talking point during much of the Asia Cup with both bowlers and batsmen unhappy with the lack of brightness. Lasith Malinga had said they weren't of international standard and Gautam Gambhir had spoken about how it was "impossible to pick the spinners from the hand".