In Michelle Tramezzino’s fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, first published in Venice in the 16th century, the heroes “always made discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of.” Considering Sri Lanka’s penchant for producing accidental cricketing heroes, it isn’t surprising that Serendip is the old, Persian name for the teardrop island where the love for the sport remains undiluted despite decades of internal strife.

Sri Lanka is a land of dark waters and brown palm trees, of emeralds and opals, of bus stands and commercial high-rises that have been bombed and rebuilt, of tiny boutique hotels and gigantic resorts that are now empty almost all year round. But in the middle its ravaged beauty, numerous cricket stadiums remain unharmed and forever in use (Colombo alone has 22 full-fledged grounds, as compared to nine in Mumbai, three in Kolkata, 13 in Delhi and 12 in Chennai).

On every visit to Sri Lanka, I’ve learnt more about how they manage to keep cricket a fair distance away from the violence of their national politics. In 2001, for example, riding late at night in an auto rickshaw from the city’s famous Cricket Club Cafe to their hotel at Galle Face Green, a group of Indian journalists was stopped at an army barricade. The soldiers asked for their passports, and an explanation of their nocturnal activities was demanded in the gruffest of voices. But no sooner had the words “cricket”, “India” and “media” been mentioned in the same sentence than the mood changed entirely.

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