Continued from Day 1 and Day 2 …

Another windy morning. Checked the 9:45am early start time of the match today with the match referee Srinath as he walked past at breakfast.

Some of the group went for a walk into the market area, which meant they missed the end of the Australian innings! Australia didn’t last long, being all out before the usual start time of 10am.

No local spectators on the Galle Fort walls today – it seems that yesterday there were numerous “Go Home Gota” banners and protestors, so today there were army guards preventing anyone going up at all.

Sri Lanka’s second innings incredibly over before 12noon. Thought they might go for an early lunch, but with Australia only needing five runs to win, they had the innings break and delayed lunch. The win only took the Aussies (i.e. Warner) four deliveries: dot, dot, four, six. Australia won comprehensively.

It was all over so quickly, by 12:10pm, it took the organisers some time to prepare for the post-match presentations.

We left the ground around 1pm, with our local tour guide apologising “for the love of cricket”, “it’s a disgrace”. So, we’ve come to Sri Lanka to see a One-Day International match (missed due to flight over-booking), and now our expected five-day test is all over in the equivalent of two days!! About 152 overs in total.

Fortunately, we enjoyed some replacement activities, including relaxing by the hotel pool, organising a manicure, and our own shopping trip by tuk-tuk into the market area, where there were so many tuk-tuks and cars queued for petrol.

We also enjoyed the extra organised activities such as a 1½ hour walking tour of the Galle Fort area, and an excursion to Kosgoda turtle conservation area, and a boat cruise in the Balapitiya area with a cinnamon “demonstration”.

On the morning of what would have been Day 4, the umpires were having breakfast at the same time as us, so once again we cheekily interrupted them. Dharmasena graciously signed my score sheet for the Sri Lankan first innings.

Decided to amend our planned “private tour” to the high tea country, including the famously picturesque train from Nuwara Eliya to Kandy. The trains have been cancelled recently, petrol is scarce, and our cricket viewing has been quite severely truncated! So, we made the call to return to Galle for the first couple of days of the second test after the group’s planned safari at Yala National Park.

Galle, we will be back!