"The smiles in Sri Lanka are as wide as the horizon." That's how Andrew Fidel Fernando starts telling the story of Sri Lanka in Upon A Sleepless Isle. The frame of reference here is that of the tourists, who visit the country to experience the local culture, spot a few elephants at the Minneriya National Park, maybe hop into a cricket match if it's on and go back with glowing memories. Ask a visiting cricket player of yesteryear instead and the divergence of opinion will be revealing.
WEST INDIES TOUR OF SRI LANKA, 2020
West Indies hope for some smile on the horizon
Having lost the first two ODIs and with that the series, the visitors will be hoping for a consolation win © AFP
Not that Sri Lanka wasn't welcoming, but there was an era when good times in the country limited itself to strictly beyond the cricket field. You couldn't enjoy the beaches and also win games of cricket here. Which meant you mostly ended up enjoying the beaches. All of it changed, of course, when the veteran players retired and Sri Lanka spiralled into a nauseating continuum of "rebuilding", which seemed to have (hyperbolically) continued until West Indies showed up and played "pretty, pretty poor" in Kieron Pollard's words and lost the ODI series.
To put it bluntly, it's not impossible to win in Sri Lanka nowadays. The heat doesn't seem to sap you as much, the eyes don't goggle as wide as the smiles now. In fact, their home series win against Bangladesh last year is their only win in nearly five years. And this West Indies side
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