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Serendib

Serendib

Author: Jo Rushby
Date: 2024-11-28

There are cricket games etched in the locker-room. In 1996, Sri Lanka took on the mighty Australia in the World Cup Cricket Final. The Aussies were clear favourites. But, to the shock of cricket aficionados, Sri Lanka gave them a cricket lesson. It catapulted this tiny island into the cricket world. This resplendent island, where Buddha once sat. A place of magical wonder. Ceylon, where, as Jan Morris wrote 'the landscapes...burst away in overpowering variety - landscapes cruel, seductive, grand or intimate in turn, so intricately jammed together that in a morning's journey you can pass from jungle to alp to classic tropical foreshore ...a gently festive air seems to linger...and leaves in almost every visitor's mind an impression of balanced serenity.'

I too hail from an island. Cool Britannica, we like to tell the world. But it is cold rather than cool. Somehow, Sri Lanka has a sultry, tropical cool. When you see Sri Lankan cricket supporters, they are full of joy. Winning or losing. How I have longed to visit this place. I have dressed it up in my imagination as a place where ageing colonial architecture lean into alleyways into colours that would make a rainbow staid.

These possibilities wash into my mind as the Sri Lankan cricket team heads into town. To play the game in my favourite form. Test cricket. At Kingsmead. It seems so long ago we had the honour of a test match, since the ancients sat under a banyan tree. Names like Jayawardena, Murali, Jayasuriya, Malinga and Fernando somersault off the tongue like a fizzy sherbet dip.

Many raise their eyebrows at the thought of Test cricket, four days of gentleness on the green. They want the razzmatazz of T20, dancing, music blaring, hardly anyone cares. And before you know it, like an English summer, it's over. Everything has to be done with speed. Symptomatic of the world we live in. But there is something so restful about Test cricket, the pace, the twists and turns, patience, elation, disappointment. It is life compressed. T20 is baseball on steroids. Cricket is like a chess match. Searching for an opening. The occasional gambit. The watchfulness.

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