COLOMBO: A Sri Lankan fruit seller suffered a massive heart attack and died after he lost a $300 bet that India would win the World Twenty20 tournament, police said on Monday.

S.P. Kumara placed the Rs40,000 bet on the eve of Sunday’s final, wrongly predicting that Sri Lanka would repeat its ‘choking’ performance at three previous international tournaments and lose to India.

“He had gone to a bookmaker at Gampaha [town] and placed a fairly large bet on an Indian win and watched the match from there,” a local police official said. “When Sri Lanka won the match, he could not believe it.”

It was the second time the vendor had backed the wrong team.

Police said he bet $1,100 on Sri Lanka to clinch the last World T20 title in 2012, only to see his home country lose to the West Indies.

The vendor collapsed and was pronounced dead on admission to hospital in Gampaha just outside Colombo, said the police official who declined to be named.

An inquest on Monday was told that the man had no known medical condition, and police suspect the shock of losing the bet triggered the heart attack. —AFP