Tour Diary

In case you took Don Bradman out of the equation, who would be the greatest batsman cricket has known? One walk into the MCG and you can’t miss the veneration accorded to Bill Ponsford, a phenomenal run-making machine in his own right.

The statue of Ponsford outside Gate 1 captures the man: he’s finished with the shot, bat in one hand and taking off for the run. It’s almost as if the sculptor is saying: there was never a doubt he could score, let’s show everyone what came after.

Opposite Melbourne's St Kilda beach, in a lane corner, with a departmental store on one side and a compact residence at the other is a prosaic two-storied building that is shut from all sides. Its grey tinge gives it a nondescript feel. It's a sort of building that might never meet your eye.

On the night of January 18, 2004, it was this building, formerly the Beaconsfield Hotel, that was the site of a tragic incident. David Hookes, the popular former Australia batsman, was celebrating Victoria's win over South Australia in a one-day game. There was little to celebrate after midnight: Hookes got into an altercation with a bouncer, fell to the ground, hit his head in the process, and went into cardiac arrest. He never recovered and was proclaimed dead the following day.

Walk in the committee room in the Melbourne Cricket Ground and you see some wonderful photographs that tell you about the evolution of the ground. There's a picture of an Ashes Test in 1894 with the newly constructed upper decks. You can see trees lining the ground and a number of spectators standing to get a glimpse of the action. Close by is a shot from the 1911-12 Test by when the tree-count had reduced with the big scoreboard and dome-like constructions taking over.

It’s Boxing Day. Let’s rush to the department stores. Let’s bargain our way to glory. Walk into many outlets and you’re likely to see impressive items going for a song. Queues and more queues, right from 6am in the morning. Reports suggest that about 8000 passed through the doors of the Chadstone shopping centre in Melbourne's east at 7am. Estimates suggest around 250 million dollars will be spent today. And to think 68,465 people spent their day at the MCG.

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Watching Matthew Hayden and Phil Jaques is great but it’s even more fun chatting with Australians. This writer has been shocked ever since setting foot in Australia. Hadn’t this been the country that intimidated visitors? The land where foreign teams were given a hostile reception? A few Australians have found it strange too but seem to have an explanation. Firstly India aren’t starting their tour in Brisbane, a city where most tours begin and one whose media is given to a fiery approach. Secondly there’s been a change of government. It’s supposed to matter. Thirdly Melbourne is a city with a large Asian community, one that allows teams from the subcontinent to adapt quickly. And to add to it, Damien Fleming, the former Australian and Victorian swing bowler, thought it was an “Indian” pitch. Merry Christmas.

Imagine crossing hemispheres, gaining five-and-a-half hours and landing in a city with exactly the same weather as the one you've taken off from. It produces a strange sort of jet-lag. You've moved but it feels you really haven't. Melbourne's sister cities include Osaka, Tianjin, Milan, Boston and St Petersburg but somebody needs to add Bangalore to that list.

It's winter in one city and (supposedly) summer in the other. It was raining when I boarded and raining when I landed: that same windy, chilly, pitter-patter. Occasionally the sun would come out and suddenly you sweated under the jacket. Hardly had you tucked it into your bag than the wind started to sting. A home away from home. And that's where the similarity ends.

After all the hassles and hardships that went into the staging of the Galle Test match, the end result has been a triumph. Never mind what happens on the final day of the series, the impact is already abundantly clear from looking around the ground and the town itself. There is an air of renewal in the streets, even one of optimism. Perhaps it's a temporary glow, fuelled by the sense of occasion, but somehow I think not. The region has been put back on the map this week, and this time for the right reasons.

Vast swathes of Galle still look tired, as well they might after the devastation that the tsunami brought about, three years ago this week. The bus station behind the ground, which felt the fullest impact of the waves, has been particularly slow to recover. But the local economy has been vibrant this week, fuelled in no small part by 4000 England fans who've packed the bars and beach resorts, and lined the pockets of the innumerable tuk-tuk drivers who buzz around in anticipation of a windfall.

England has this effect on sleepy touring venues. Port Elizabeth three years ago and Brisbane last winter were two of the biggest economic winners of recent times, and though Galle won’t report quite such a profit margin, the bigger picture - once again - is the most important aspect. Tourism is an industry in which Sri Lanka deserves to be a world leader, but the memories of the tsunami, twinned with concerns about the conflict to the north, have undermined its standing as a paradise isle.

None of the 4000 fans in town have had any grounds for complaint or anxiety these week. For those who've not taken up residence in the wonderful old fort, there have been two principal accommodation areas. The surfer's hangout of Hikkaduwa, half an hour to the north, and the tranquil sandy bay of Unawatana, 20 minutes to the south. Both were badly hit in the disaster, but both have proved homes from home for a vast contingent of very satisfied customers.

After all the angst and uncertainty, it was as if we'd never been away. Up until the moment that the first ball was bowled, the doubts still lingered about the readiness of the venue, but after three traumatic years, nothing was going to prevent this comeback from being completed. International cricket is back in Galle, and on the evidence of a brief but eventful day's play, it won't be departing again in a hurry.

It was, quite simply, a blisteringly hot day. Some forecasters claimed it was 97% humidity, but it was hard to spot the 3% of Matthew Hoggard's brow that wasn't drenched in sweat. But for the punters around the stands, the heat was nothing but a blessing - most of them had feared this would turn into a sub-tropical Glastonbury, but the brutal conditions did away with all the mud and ensured that the duckboards upon which their chairs were perched didn't sink below the boundary boards.

He's better known now for his dulcet early-morning tones on Test Match Special, but there was a time, a couple of decades ago, when Jonathan Agnew was a firebrand fast bowler with international aspirations. In a famous outburst on the England A tour to Sri Lanka in 1986, Aggers' fieriness became all too literal:

What Agnew failed to mention was the life-enhancing magnificence of the said curries - if, of course, they are anything like the ones we've been fed in the press-box during the course of the first two Tests. Great steaming vats of chicken and fish with deceptively mellifluous aromas, they pack the sort of punch that Ricky Hatton lacked in Las Vegas, and reduce me to tears of admiration on a daily basis.

Back home in England, only hard nuts and show-offs order creations of this strength, and even then they only do it at the end of a long night on the tiles. And yet Sri Lankans somehow slurp them down, day in, day out, without so much as a moistening of the brow. As Peter Moores might have said at the end of England's fielding stint at the SSC: "You can't fault that sort of commitment."

In less than three weeks' time, Sri Lanka will commemorate the third anniversary of the worst natural disaster ever to hit the island's shores. On Boxing Day 2004, more than 35,000 lives were lost and a further half-a-million people were left homeless when a gigantic earthquake off the coast of Indonesia sent waves of up to 30 metres crashing into the country. The devastation was apocalyptic, particularly along the Southern and Eastern coastlines, but in the years since, many lives have been pieced back together, often with aid from overseas.

One such project has been initiated by Surrey County Cricket Club. Six months after the disaster, Surrey held a Tsunami Relief match at The Oval, between an Asian XI and the Rest of the World. Stars such as Brian Lara and Sachin Tendulkar took part in the event and helped to raise £1 million. This week, in the break between the first and second Tests, a party of British journalists got a chance to see just how effectively that money had been used.