Cricket: Sri Lankan players prepare for shock

Homeward bound: Sri Lankan player Tillekaratne Dilshan and his one-year-old child, Resandu, arrive at the Auckland domestic airport yesterday after the postponement of the team's tour here. Picture / Glenn Jeffrey

An air of grim determination was hanging over the Sri Lankan cricketers yesterday as they prepared to leave New Zealand and rush back to their disaster-stricken homeland.

Having watched the tsunami horror unfold on television, the Sri Lankan players were steeling themselves for the real life experience last night after the tour was called off at the mutual agreement of both boards.

The squad will leave New Zealand on flights over the next 48 hours bound for Sri Lanka, where manager Brendon Kuruppu said they would be faced with the appalling reality of the Boxing Day tsunamis.

"There is absolutely no doubt that everyone wants to get back home and help out, whatever the extent of the devastation," he said last night.

"What we've seen so far has been horrifying but it has only been on television - the reality will be a lot worse, and we understand that. We've talked about it and we're about as ready as we can be to help."

The about-face by the Sri Lankan board was announced at 3am yesterday, only hours after New Zealand chief executive Martin Snedden had made public their confirmation that the tour would proceed on a re-arranged basis.

Snedden said yesterday that he understood the Sri Lankans' decision, given the rapidly escalating scale of the disaster, and the futility of trying to play cricket at such a time.

"As the magnitude of the recent events have unfolded, it has become more difficult for the Sri Lankan team to remain in New Zealand, and we appreciate that," he said.

He said Sri Lanka had made a commitment to return and complete the tour at a later date, but that it certainly wouldn't be this summer, and that the details would be finalised at a more opportune time.

The decision to scrap the tour came after Sri Lankan board president Mohan de Silva was quoted in a press release as saying the team was anxious to go home, but that they couldn't because of the risk of International Cricket Council sanctions.

However, after the ICC advised that the tour could be called off by mutual agreement, Sri Lanka convened another emergency board meeting and opted to ask NZC to release the team from their commitments.

Sri Lanka's operations director Bandula Warnapura told Colombo news agencies that the key to the cancellation request was the response from New Zealand Cricket.

"The hosts [NZC] had to first agree on the cancellation of the tour," he said. "But both cricket boards have now mutually agreed to reschedule it at some appropriate time in the future."

For all that, SLC president de Silva - who put a cat among the pigeons with his comments on Monday night, was suggesting yesterday that New Zealand were reluctant to pull the plug on the tour, and that they were trying everything possible to rescue the series.

De Silva was reported in Colombo's Daily News as saying that SLC were caught in a tricky situation as NZC were initially not too happy to call off the tour, but instead suggested rescheduling the matches and playing them after the five-day period of mourning.

Snedden said it was too soon to discuss what NZC might do to fill the gaping month-long hole in the summer programme, but was only luke-warm about the prospects of arranging a replacement tour.

Of the possible eight test playing nations, only India is uncommitted in the relevant time frame, and Snedden said he would be surprised if they were prepared to fill in at such short notice.