All-Star match more than a game

January 10, 2005
Sri Lanka's Sanath Jayasuriya at yesterday's Junction Oval practice session for the tsunami appeal match at the MCG today.

Photo: Vince Caligiuri

Sri Lanka's players look to give something back to their nation, write Nabila Ahmed and Chloe Saltau.

For Sri Lanka, cricket now means nothing and everything.

It was the last thing on the players' minds as they returned home from their abandoned tour of New Zealand, anxious about friends and relatives who had been caught up in the tsunami disaster. Today, though, it means a great deal as four of Sri Lanka's best players turn their minds to the game that inspires their nation.

Chaminda Vaas could not help but be moved to tears by what he saw when he visited Galle just days after the tsunami, but what really broke him was a simple query.

Sri Lanka's great left-arm bowler was in the southern coastal city to lend his support, and some of the people who had lost everything from their families to their homes wanted to know what had happened to Sri Lanka's tour of NZ.

"People are still crying and people couldn't believe it, what's happened to Sri Lanka. They are still suffering. But on the other hand, they ask you about the match, (wanting to know) what happened to us," Vaas recalled yesterday.

"Whenever Sri Lanka plays, all the Sri Lankan people are supporting us. When something happens like this, we have to support them back. They're always supporting us, so this is the time for Sri Lankan cricket to help the needy people."

The same cause moved Sri Lankan off spinner Muttiah Muralitharan to put aside past grudges against Australian crowds to be in Melbourne for the All-Star match. And it inspired Sanath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka's opening batsman to leave his stricken neighbourhood and his injured mother in the hope that the millions of dollars raised through today's match would help.

Still, Jayasuriya will be thinking of home when he walks on to the MCG. His mother, Breeda, was one of the few people at the Matara markets to survive when the tsunami washed over his village.

"My house is not even 20 metres from the beach. Unfortunately, my mum was at the market. People who were there at the market - most of them died. My mother was very lucky to survive," said Jayasuriya, whose family home in the southern Sri Lankan fishing village was ruined.

"She got discharged (from hospital in Colombo) only yesterday. She has got a lot of wounds all over the body and she was almost drowned, but someone saw her and took her out of the water."

Jayasuriya said while it was important to deliver material aid to Sri Lankans who will struggle to rebuild their houses and cities, today's match had the potential to lighten the mood of a population terrified about another tsunami.

"People have lost their houses, lost their loved ones. It's a very sad thing for our country," Jayasuriya said. "The people are mentally down at the moment because people are saying it will come again and people are listening to all these rumours going around the island that another tsunami is coming. It's a big problem at the moment."

Muralitharan, united with his rival Shane Warne again, witnessed the devastation caused by the tsunami first-hand when he visited refugee camps under an aid program devised by the Sri Lankan cricket board. He was particularly saddened to see the previously beautiful Galle cricket ground strewn with debris and all but destroyed.

"I have taken almost 100 wickets in that ground, so it is a ground you are going to miss. The city is totally washed out and there are millions of people homeless," Muralitharan said. "Now people have to make sure the food and aid is getting through. They need rebuilding because if they don't have houses, they can't live."