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| Sunday, 2 January 2005 |
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Cricketers return home at last by Lal Gunesekera The Sri Lanka cricketers who were stranded in Auckland due to non availability of flights after their tour of New Zealand was postponed indefinitely due to the Boxing Day Tsunami disaster, finally managed to get a flight to Colombo last Friday and arrived at the Bandaranaike International Airport (BIA) last morning. A spokesman for the Sri Lanka side told the Sunday Observer that the cricketers were not in the right frame of mind to continue with the tournament after hearing and seeing the Tsunami calamity that struck the country which left nearly 30.000 dead and thousands of others homeless. He said: They watched the gruesome scenes on TV and read about it in the newspapers and were determined to get back home. At one stage, Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC), wanted the side to continue with the tour and games re-scheduled, but later gave in after discussions with the ICC and New Zealand Cricket (NZC), and decided to postpone the tour indefinitely. Sri Lanka lost their first One-Day International to New Zealand and were scheduled to play four others and also two Tests. But now, the SLC and NZC will have to rearrange another tour in the future. NZC had earlier suggested an alternative to reschedule the balance matches of the tour and play them after the five-day mourning period, but the Lankan cricketers were adamant in returning home and finally both NZC and SLC agreed to cancel the rest of the tour and re-schedule the tour for an appropriate time. Earlier last year (2004), Australia postponed its tour of Zimbabwe by mutual agreement between the two cricket Boards. Meanwhile, SLC, has arranged a media briefing with the Sri Lanka team at its headquarters at Maitland Place tomorrow (Monday) afternoon where a discussion too is to take place regarding the "Disaster Assistance Fund" of SLC. |
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