Preparations for the Twenty20 World Cup in Sri Lanka continue as posters are hung up and local shopkeepers anticipate an increase in sales. The two-yearly tournament in cricket's shortest format, the ICC Twenty20 Cricket World Cup, will be played from September 18 to October 7, with Hambantota holding three matches, Pallekele nine and capital Colombo fifteen. Sri Lanka is banking on cricket to repair the damage to its blood-stained image after the brutal end to a 37-year ethnic war as it stages the biggest tournament in the nation's post-independence history. Since declaring an end in 2009 to a conflict that claimed up to 100,000 lives, President Mahinda Rajapakse's government has had to battle accusations that its troops killed thousands of civilians as they crushed Tamil rebels in the finale.