Members’ End: Fraternising with the enemy, Morkel’s mean streak, retiring in style, singing statues

Sunday Times

TELFORD VICE, Colombo

That Sri Lankans make friendly opponents is well known. Not for them the snottiness of the English, the Australian brand of swagger or the arrogance of the Indians. Instead, they invite visitors home for dinner. Dilruwan Perera did exactly that with Quinton de Kock, Dale Steyn and JP Duminy. The connection? They all played for Sunrisers Hyderabad in last year’s Indian Premier league.

The fraternisation continued on the field at Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) on Friday, when Kumar Sangakkara and Dean Elgar had a fat chat at short midwicket while they waited for Faf du Plessis to pad up in a hurry after Alviro Petersen had found way to hit a completely innocuous delivery back to Rangana Herath.

At least Morne Morkel knows how to deal with the enemy. When Niroshan Dickwella, who made a pugnacious debut at SSC, watched ball instead of man as he ran down the pitch and, consequently, ran slap-bang into the tall fast bowler, Morkel told him, properly, to look where he was going.

Galle’s railway station is a marvel of colonial pettiness. There is no sign of digital technology, but there are separate waiting rooms for “gentlemen” and “ladies”, as well as something called a “retirement room”. Graeme? Jacques? Bouch? Are you okes in there?

If you happen to stroll through Independence Square in Colombo at 8.30am sharp, stand very still. Around you, locals who had a moment earlier been striding purposefully will, too, be motionless. Their cue will have been the opening strains of “Sri Lanka Matha”, or “Mother Sri Lanka”, the national anthem, which booms out of loudspeakers in and around the square every day at that time and brings the foot traffic in the area to an impeccably observed halt. Thing is, the softly lilting song winds on for 80 or so seconds. That’s far shorter than Greece’s 158 verses or Uruguay’s 105 bars of music, but much longer than Uganda’s eight bars. This week, it was too long a time to stand still for two runners who had survived the heat and humidity - yes, even at 8.30am - for all but one of the kilometres they planned to spend on the city’s streets: they were in the home straight and nothing was going to stop them. So they weaved around the sudden statues and even a policeman smartly snapped to attention. His eyes followed them disapprovingly ...