Recovery from a Catastrophe

Twenty years ago today, the Tsunami overwhelmed the magnificent cricket ground below with everlasting consequences

Sri Lanka’s original name was ‘Serendipity’ and anyone who visits the island would agree it lives up to this dictionary definition – a beautiful thing fortuitously discovered. That certainly applies to the Galle Cricket ground (above), which a couple of years ago, I was gazing down on, standing atop the landmark Dutch Fort.. I was among Japanese tourists posing for selfies, English honeymooners basking in the sun and a couple of snake charmers with a monkey on a lead.

The glistening sea was to my left and right; in front was the rebuilt Test cricket ground where a lively club match was in progress. Beside the water another game of (tennis ball) cricket was in progress on a dirt pitch complete with temporary stand and excitable commentator. Next to me some children beckoned me to join in their impromptu game. “Sir, sir, you bat sir!” I was out third ball. (It was ever thus.)

News channels today have been reporting various ceremonies around Sri Lanka to remember the victims of the 2004 Tsunami. The spot on which I was standing above, was one of many places where, on Boxing Day twenty years ago, catastrophe struck. A former Harrow pupil, Spencer Crawley, on a cricket tour to Sri Lanka with the school at the time, remembers it vividly. “We were warming up on the Galle outfield. Suddenly from nowhere this sheet of water raced across the field. It was as if a pipe had burst. The immediate reaction was to head for the pavilion as it was built on stilts.

“Just as we got there a second layer of water, much bigger and stronger, surged across from either side of the fort. It was like a pincer movement.

“Two powerful walls of turbulent water and within about 30 seconds the whole ground was engulfed. The school bus in the car park had been thrown towards the pavilion and then flung to the other side of the ground.” The water kept rising to the top of the pavilion steps and several times they were told to get ready to swim.

After three frightening hours, the water receded and they were able to escape to the safety of the fort, passing the bodies of two spectators who hadn’t made it to the pavilion in time. Galle’s main street was littered with bodies and overturned vehicles.

Galle is not just one of the world’s most beautiful cricket grounds but also one of the most vulnerable

Spencer’s mother and stepfather were travelling to the game in a bus when the tsunami struck. The bus overturned. Spencer’s stepfather Julian forced out the back window of the bus and helped his wife escape though he himself perished. The family subsequently donated money to the establishment of a cricket academy at the rebuilt Galle stadium that was named after him.

That generosity was typical of the cricketing fraternity’s response to the disaster that claimed the lives of 30,000 people in Sri Lanka, including hundreds of holidaymakers.The legendary spinner Muttiah Muralitharan, who but for the warnings from other motorists could have been a tsunami victim himself, immediately began major fundraising with the Foundation of Goodness, the charity he set up with his manager Kushil Gunasekera. Murali, a Tamil, seconded the rest of the Sri Lanka team – mostly Sinhalese – to help. They rode relief trucks to the devastated east coast to usurp obstructive red tape.

Murali could have been caught in the 2004 Tsunami

Gunasekera personally rescued dozens of children in his home village of Seenigama, which was destroyed. He set about establishing a modern settlement and sports academy on the site and it now boasts 1,000 houses, an IT training centre and two artificial cricket pitches laid by the MCC and Surrey called Lord’s and The Oval. Ian Botham, profoundly affected by a tsunami survivor he had met who couldn’t save both her children from the advancing sea and had to let one go, threw himself into the fundraising initiative and some years ago walked from one end of Sri Lanka to the other for the cause.

Not long after the tsunami struck, the fragile truce between the Sinhalese government and the Tamil rebels broke down and fighting intensified again. The war was brutally ended only in 2009. Since then the country has been tarnished by political corruption and terrible inflation, amongst other crises, yet slowly and determinedly it has struggled to its feet. In the 40 years that I have been traveling there, drawn by the beauty of the place and its people as well as its uninhibited cricketers, this is perhaps the first time that the green shoots of peace and prosperity are finally sprouting. It has experienced more than its fair share of calamities’ but, partly thanks to cricket, Sri Lankans keep on smiling. And in a way, that is the most serendipitous thing about the place.

Tsunami - The Wave That Shook The World is on ITV1 on Dec 27th at 10pm.