Quake puts Sri Lankan cricket tour on hold
Quake puts Sri Lankan cricket tour on hold
Agence France-Presse, Auckland
Sri Lanka's cricket tour of New Zealand was put in doubt Monday after the devastating tidal waves which killed nearly 6,000 people in their home country.
"We are really worried, but we need to speak to the guys and see how we take it (the tour) from here," team manager Brendan Kuruppu said.
"It's a disaster in Sri Lanka, we're in shock and having a nightmare," he said.
Sri Lanka lost the first of five scheduled one-day international matches against New Zealand by seven wickets on Sunday and flew Monday from Auckland to Napier, where the second match is scheduled for Wednesday.
Kuruppu met with the team and New Zealand Cricket chief Martin Snedden in Napier and then told a press conference a decision on the future of the tour would be taken Tuesday after he could speak with Sri Lanka's cricket board overnight.
He said he would not rule out a rescheduling of Wednesday's match, but indicated the tour itself -- due to climax with two Tests in the second half of January -- would go ahead.
"It will be a difficult thing in the immediate future, but as professional cricketers if there is a job to do we would be getting into cricket mode," he said.
"We are really concerned about the people in Sri Lanka. The team want to send their sympathies to the families who have lost their loved ones, and our thoughts are with them."
Two players' mothers were injured by the tidal waves and a relative of another player's wife had been killed, Kuruppu said. He declined to identify the players.
Snedden said he had already drawn up some contingency plans for the tour, but would wait to share them with Kuruppu and the Sri Lankan board on Tuesday.
"We'll start thinking about the cricket when the time's right, and we both of us agree the time's not right now, it's all too fresh," he said.
"Tomorrow we'll really address the issue properly, and obviously there will be some decisions that have to be made pretty quickly at that stage."