Where bat meets Galle: why cricket is the least of Sri Lanka’s tests

Watching cricket at Galle, you are joined by the Indian Ocean on either side. Off the southern curve of the teardrop shape of Sri Lanka, a short promontory juts into the sea. Most of it is taken up by Galle Fort, vast in bulk and rising from level ground in an imposing apparition of stone. From Portuguese to Dutch to British to its modern Sri Lankan tourism incarnation, its eras reveal themselves in patches like different coats of varnish wearing through. People shelter from the rain under its central archway. A bird flies like an arrow into a tiny hole worn high in the rock. On a patch of grass below, lush with rainfall, 60 kids armed with cricket bats practice pull shots and drives in a soundless ballet.

At the neck of the promontory, where it narrows, the oval sits like a pendant at its throat. The playing area and the trees beyond glow emerald in the sun. From its seats, one view faces the fort wall. The opposite side faces the broadening city. Then on the flanks, that ocean. There are plenty of cricket grounds that show you water from a distance: some river or estuary, a blue background miles away, tiny boats for a zoom lens to tremble on. Here, it is close enough for detail. A heaving surface of green and grey. Waves thunder in, that white foaming herd of horses, snorting and jostling before crashing to shore. All day, in the stands, you hear that surge and swell, lulling you or lifting you on your own personal tide.

Galle does its own version of hot. The kind of tropical heat that wraps around you like wet cloth. You can carve out tiny sanctuaries of air-conditioning, but you are living in denial. Always, outside, it is waiting like the dark beyond the light switch. At times the sea breeze carves across the town,