Sri Lanka’s cricket tour of New Zealand will proceed with a
revised itinerary following devastating tidal waves which killed
more than 12,000 people in the island nation.
The second of five limited-overs internationals, scheduled to be
played at Napier on Wednesday, has been rescheduled for Jan. 11 and
the start dates of the team’s two test matches in January may be
pushed back by several days.
The tour will resume with a one-day match in Queenstown on
Sunday and may be extended to accommodate itinerary changes, New
Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden said.
Limited-overs matches in Christchurch on Jan. 4 and Wellington
on Jan. 8 will proceed as scheduled but an additional warmup match
may be added before the first test at Hamilton.
The Hamilton match is due to start on Jan. 15 but may now be
delayed as well as the second test at Wellington from Jan. 22.
The decision to proceed with the tour was made after the Sri
Lankan cricket board held an emergency meeting in Colombo on Monday
night.
Board members requested the postponement of the second one-day
match to allow the Sri Lankan players to observe a period of
mourning.
”They decided what they wanted to do and that seemed more than
reasonable to me,” Snedden said.
”After talking to (Sri Lankan team manager) Brendon Kuruppu it
was pretty clear how badly affected he and the team had been.”
Spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, who was to join the touring team
for the test matches, may not play in the series.
Muralitharan was reported to be in the Sri Lankan coastal town
of Galle when the tidal waves struck.
”I missed the wave by 20 minutes,” Muralitharan told Tuesday’s
Sydney Morning Herald newspaper. ”I had only just left Galle so I
am very lucky to be alive.”
Kuruppu said the mother of one player was injured. He said most
players were accompanied in New Zealand by their wives and children
and the team respected the decision to proceed with the tour.
”It will be a difficult thing in the immediate future, but as
professional cricketers if there is a job to do we would be getting
into cricket mode,” he said. – Sapa-AP