The Unbearable Shrug Of The Sri Lankan Cricket Fan

"Ah, we lose last match," he said with the kind of shrug of resignation that comes easily to taxi drivers. All those kilometres and demanding passengers add up, and in the end the world around you must feel either like an apology or that it is deserving of an apology.

But, because he was a Sri Lankan taxi driver, his shrug came with a certain sagging of the spirit and was followed by same flavour of silence with which the crowd greeted South Africa's moment of victory in the third one-day international in Hambantota on Saturday, which sealed the series in the visitors' favour.

Never before had South Africa won a one-day series on this steamy, somnambulating island, and the winning of it gave Russell Domingo every reason to snatch from his detractors their weird reasoning that he had no business coaching an international cricket team because he had not played international cricket.

How come all those South Africa coaches who came before him and who had played at the highest level could not win a one-day series in Sri Lanka? Could it be that they thought - and were allowed to think by a public that refuses to think critically - that they knew everything? It could.

The awkward truth is that good cricketers are good at playing cricket and, too often, not much else. As commentators and writers, they tend to clutch at cliches, while those capable of coaching at a high level are as thin on the ground as a hooked six by Geoffrey Boycott.

Considering most players do not bother with acquiring something as esoteric in their world as a university degree or with gaining experience in a useful field until they near 40, when many of their peers in age terms are halfway up their career ladders, their options for the future can be bleak.

Which was not why the taxi driver was disappointed. Like the man said, "Ah, we lost last match." If my Sinhalese was at least as good at his English we could have discussed what had gone wrong for the Lankans and right for the South Africans with the seriousness he clearly believed the issue deserved. As it was, the language gap meant all we had to go on were those few words and that shrug.

But, by now, it was not hard to know where he was coming from: Sri Lanka, of course, where supporters are apparently born with their hearts on one sleeve and their minds on the other. Which meant, for Sri Lankans, that the world had ended when South Africa won on Saturday.

That the rubber had been keenly fought and that Wednesday would herald the start of a Test series in Galle, where Sri Lanka have lost only four of their 22 Tests and South Africa have not won either of their previous two Tests, mattered little. The sting, the burden, the shame of defeat would be with them until their team next won.

Sri Lankans are among the most passive people this South African has yet met, which makes it difficult to understand how and why it took them 26 years to resolve a civil war. They are also among the most resourceful people, which makes it easy to understand how and why they have all but erased evidence of the devastation wrought by the tsunami in 2004.

But Sri Lankans are also among the most one-eyed supporters in all of sport, in the nicest possible way.

They have no arrogance, only adulation for their team. When that team wins, they are beside themselves with joy. When their team loses, it matters not a jot that the other team have won or even that they deserved to win. All that matters, to cab drivers and neurosurgeons alike, is that Sri Lanka have lost.

The fact is soaked in melancholy and drowned in sorrow. Perhaps people who have come out the other side of a civil war and a tsunami should not pin so much hope on 11 men who could be unemployable in the next few years. Perhaps those of us who have not endured those nightmares should not ask questions like those.

"Yes, Sri Lanka lost, but you have a good team, and the Test series will be different."

He shrugged again. "Yes, different," he said. Then the silence returned.