Jimmy Anderson could lose his seam partner should the tourists opt for horses for courses in GalleThis is a special place for a Test match. Two sides of Galle’s cricket ground are flanked by the ocean and a third is overlooked by the magnificent old Dutch fort where the pauper and the miser can share an excellent view of the cricket. On Saturday the skeletons of the awnings to be fixed over the stands were being erected to prevent English spectators from being frazzled or drenched come Tuesday for the first Test against Sri Lanka – hopefully the former is the greater peril but there are no guarantees at this time of the year.There was also some activity out in...
Roguish interloper who stole radio rights to England’s winter tours bowls tidy opening over for listeners fearing loss of TMSThe barbarians are at the gates. The lunatics are on the grass. Ten kilo bags of mixed gravel aggregate are two‑for‑one at your local Bumcrack Warrior Warehouse. And most alarming of all, starting with Wednesday’s rain‑ravaged first one‑day international in Dambulla, the cricket is now on commercial radio.When the news broke in April that TalkSport had outbid the BBC to take the radio rights for England’s tour of Sri Lanka the response was mixed. Reactions tended to veer between mild irritation at the loss, for a few months, of a much‑loved programme; to wistful, sun-bleached nostalgia for a world shadowed with...
Echoes of Arjuna Ranatunga’s World Cup-winning blueprint – potent spinners, pinch-hitting openers, bucket loads of confidence – can be seen in the England ODI side todayAs England and Sri Lanka prepare for the five-match one-day series starting on Wednesday in Dambulla, a warm-up of sorts for the World Cup now less than eight months away, it feels the right time to stumble backwards 22 years, to one of cricket’s greatest stories.On 17 March 1996, in the sultry atmosphere of Lahore’s Gaddafi Stadium, Arjuna Ranatunga, Sri Lanka’s captain, lifted the World Cup high into the air. No one could quite believe it. Sri Lanka, the baby brother of the Asian block, the international whipping boys, had popped out of the hat,...