Sri Lanka tour of NZ goes on

WELLINGTON: New Zealand’s one-day cricket international against Sri Lanka scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed until January 11, but the tour will go ahead, it was announced yesterday. New Zealand Cricket Chief Executive Martin Snedden said the second match of the series was postponed to allow Sri Lanka a five-day period of national mourning after devastating tidal waves killed more than 12,000 people on the South Asian island. The next match in the series will be as scheduled in Queenstown on Sunday, followed by Christchurch on January 4, Wellington on January 8, and Napier on January 11.

Snedden said he responded to the Sri Lankan board’s request after an emergency meeting was held yesterday (monday). “They decided what they wanted to do and that seemed more than reasonable to me,” Snedden said. “After talking to (Sri Lanka manager) Brendon Kuruppu it was pretty clear how badly affected he and the team had been.” No players or management had lost immediate family in the floods, but Kuruppu said they were deeply affected. Two players’ mothers were injured by floodwaters, while a relative of another player’s wife had been killed. New Zealand won the first one-dayer by seven wickets in Auckland on Sunday last.