The Grameenphone Women's Tri-Nation Cricket Series begins here at the Shaheed Chandu Stadium with Bangladesh taking on Pakistan in the opening match today.
Sri Lanka and Pakistan go into the series looking for practice ahead of the World Cup where they will hope their performance impresses other sides enough to secure more bilateral series.
The series may not be the ideal preparation for the World Cup but Sri Lanka and Pakistan, along with Australia and New Zealand, are the only teams playing international cricket a month before the tournament, which gives them some edge over the rest.
India dominated the Asia Cup last May but the others managed to take some positives from the tournament. Sri Lanka reached the final -- and will be favourites in the tri-series -- while Bangladesh beat Pakistan before losing to them later.
Meanwhile our Borga correspondent adds, locals here could not wait to see international cricket return to their backyard since 2006.