Tour Diary

A genial bodyguard waits outside the room. Inside, by a window through which the Indian Ocean glistens in the night light, Arjuna Ranatunga holds court. Clad in a lungi and a shirt, he rolls out one good story after another till late into the night - almost 2 a.m. at last count.

As you would expect, some stories are printable, others are not. Some are dipped in cricketing nostalgia, others are his thoughts on the present state of Sri Lankan cricket and his future ambitions but here we'll stick to the cricket.

I'm sending this from Princess Juliana International Airport, in St Marteen, on my way to Antigua. The two teams – and the TV crew – had a direct charter flight, but the humble journalist is not so lucky. However, this brief stopover has many bonuses.

This is what the Caribbean looks like in the holiday brochures; sweeping beaches, crystal blue water and swaying palm trees. Jamaica had all of those, but Kingston itself was a rather edgy city. That isn't meant as a harsh comment – and I certainly didn't have a chance to explore it properly, while other areas of the island are meant to be stunning (not least the Blue Mountains) – but when you are warned not to walk five minutes between hotels it does give you a certain impression.

It's a good job Sunday is the traditional day of rest because a quite few people are probably nursing some serious hangovers. Kingston woke up to headlines of "REVENGE" as the newspapers savoured the moment of West Indies' famous win. The town was quiet this morning, the normally packed roads nearly deserted, but it had been a far different story the night before.

The music was pumping out of Sabina Park long after the game finished and the mound stand would have partied all night if officials had let it. Some young West Indies fans will never have known a moment like this after being brought up on a history of defeat after defeat.

Ravindra Jadeja had his first taste of international cricket today and he showed that he belongs there. He didn't embarrass himself. Through the last ten days, whenever one has bumped into him at the team hotel, Jadeja has always been talking about grabbing his chance when the opportunity comes

In the morning, ahead of Jadeja's first one-day international, Sachin Tendulkar gave him the India cap on the ground. It's been a 12-year dream for Jadeja. It's the story of a young boy and his mother standing firm on the path to walk in life. When he was just eight and beginning to fall in love with the game, his father, a security guard, decided he had to join the army and was just a day away from enrolling him. Jadeja cajoled his mother to persuade his father from doing it.

When you visit the Tamil Union Club house at the P Sarvanamuttu Stadium, a huge portrait of Don Bradman walking out to toss in 1948 with a Sri Lankan legend, Mahadevan Sathasivam, welcomes you.

Sathasivam is revered by the old timers in India for the 215 he made in just over four hours at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, considered one of the best knocks played in Chennai. The local legend here talks of a 96 out of a total of 150 on a sticky wicket against the visiting Commonwealth team. Frank Worrell, who played in that game, and Garry Sobers hailed Sathasivam as a great batsman. Ghulam Ahmed, that wizard of an offspinner who bowled to the likes of Everton Weekes, Sobers, Len Hutton, Rohan Kanhai, Denis Compton and Hanif Mohammad, also named Sathasivam as the best batsman he had ever bowled to. For the cricket history buffs, Sathasivam would breeze into a World XI from the non-Test playing era.

Enough about his batting. It's the man we are interested in. He apparently was a flamboyant figure with a penchant for the good life. The Keith Miller of Sri Lanka. Historian Michael Roberts plays killjoy though. "And subsequently Neville Jayaweera has confirmed this speculation: "Satha was a hopeless fielder, never chased a ball, dropped catches and all because for most of the time he was drunk," Roberts wrote. I am beginning to like Satha even more.

However the point Roberts, who also rates Sathasivam as a great batsman, raised is that you have to be careful about setting bad examples to the current generation, when talking about tales of past cricketers hitting hundreds after drinking through the night. For what it's worth, his fielding might have suffered, but Sathasivam did hit hundreds after partying through the night.

The morning Kingston traffic can make travelling to the ground a bit of a challenge and it's never easy to judge quite how long it will take. Unless, that is, you can find yourself a police escort.

As I pulled into the car park of the Hilton hotel to pick up a colleague on the way to the third day, the England team – complete with cricket's two most expensive players in Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff – had just boarded their coach. At the front was a police car and outrider motorbike cop with lights already flashing. My driver spotted his opportunity and raced back around to his driver's seat. "Let's get behind them," he said.

"Tidy but excitable behind the stumps." That's how BBC profiles Romesh Kaluwitharana. I meet him sitting behind a corporate desk now. The cabin has a lovely view of the serene Beira Lake, with the blue-roofed Seema Malakaya temple sitting gently on its waters which wind around tall business buildings and a picturesque ground in the heart of Colombo. "Little Kalu", the darling of the crowds and excitable commentators, is now a business executive with Sri Lanka tourism. He still looks supremely fit and now sports a designer hair style, with hair strands running down in thin lines towards his forehead. He is attired in formals and looks pretty natty indeed.

Everyone knows that Kaluwitharana, known for his feisty cuts and pulls, was a very attacking batsman but he prided himself for being a correct player. Asked once what gave him most pleasure among his achievements, he said: "That I never played a reverse sweep all my life. I always played correct cricket."

He displayed that technique in ample measure during the series that he stormed into public memory. Everyone knows how Kaluwitharana formed an explosive opening combination with Sanath Jayasuriya during the victorious 1996 World Cup campaign. But it was on the controversial tour of Australia, where Muttiah Muralitharan was no balled for throwing, that he made a name for himself as an opener, shredding the bowlers.

One of clearest signs of the decline in West Indies cricket has been the fall in attendances at Test matches. In years gone by the grounds would have been packed out with vocal home support, supplemented by boat and plane loads of English tourists to cheer on the visitors.

The latter still remain and there has been a steady stream arriving into Kingston over the last few days, but the home support is threatening to vanish – at least inside the ground. Of course this isn't a problem solely in West Indies, but it is because the passionate crowds were once such a part of the Caribbean experience that it is felt so noticeably.

"They are not very encouraging," was how Donald Peters, the chief executive of the West Indies cricket board, bluntly explained tickets sales during the series launch. He wouldn't give an exact figure, but the signs on the first day were that take-up hadn't been great. However, a few more filtered in during the day and pre-sold tickets have never been a big thing here, as the World Cup showed in 2007. People like to decide on the day and walk-up, but less are choosing to these days.

The board will let school children in free – and there are two schools behind the main scoreboard side of the ground, so let's hope they are allowed to bunk off early – but have not yet decided whether to drop the ticket prices which currently range from JAM$800 to JAM$2,400 (£10-£30) per day.

It was 11.45pm last night when some of us journalists walked into the bar where we bumped into the India team celebrating the series win. They were in full strength. On one side of the dimly lit bar, which shook with loud Hindi film remixes, a few cricketers were playing pool. Some drank, some didn't.

Yuvraj and the young brigade led by Rohit Sharma, Ishant Sharma, Suresh Raina and Pragyan Ojha had already begun shaking a leg. Sehwag and Gambhir parked themselves at one table with Gary Kirsten; Sachin Tendulkar was having a long chat with Paddy Upton. Mahendra Singh Dhoni was everywhere.

Suddenly, the Tamil song, Manmada Raasa blared out and a whistle rang through the room. It was L Balaji at work. Slowly, the dancers dragged everybody on the floor at various points - even Kirsten, who responded by vigorously shaking every limb, and Upton were not spared. Tendulkar never let himself completely loose but swayed around rhythmically. Sameer Dighe, the former India wicketkeeper, was there too and played pool with Tendulkar. Cries of cheating went up and now then from Dighe. Those gathered around the pool table laughed.

Some journalists approached Dhoni for permission to photograph the team celebrating. "No, yaar. Let them celebrate peacefully. I just want them to enjoy the moment."

I don’t remember any of Brendon Kuruppu’s shots. However, as a kid, I scored lots of runs playing as Kuruppu in hard-fought games in the backyard, on the terrace and sometimes even in the living room. My brother and I often played as international teams, 11 Gaaji was the name of the game, and Kuruppu was lucky for me when I played as Sri Lanka. Kuruppu was also one of the first Sri Lankan names I learnt from the grainy Doordarshan footage. I loved the way the name rolled of my tongue, I thought it was funny. And so I was thrilled when I learnt that he was the manager of the Sri Lankan team.

Kuruppu still looks the same from when I remember him – lean and sporting a thick moustache. He was an aggressive opening batsman who made a name for himself as one of the pioneers of hitting the new ball over the inner circle. “I was one of the first batsmen to go over the top,” Kuruppu said. “Kris Srikkanth was almost parallel, or just after me, in India. I thought it would be easier to score runs that way. I was not doing that in school and club cricket but later on I felt this would be a better way." He recalls one of his aggressive moments. "It was the World Cup game against Pakistan in 1983. I hit Mudassar Nazar over long-on, a long way out of the ground on to the road."