South Africa's warm-up match washed out

The only warm-up game that South Africa were scheduled to play against Sri Lanka Cricket President's XI in Colombo ahead of the first match of the tri-series on August 14 was washed out due to heavy rains continuing from the night before.

Mickey Arthur, the South African coach, and Goolam Raja, the team manager, went to the ground early in the morning and after seeing the conditions decided to cancel the game. The squad will try to hire a local ground for net sessions and some form of match practice.

Johan van der Wath and Andre Nel were two players from the injury-hit South African squad who were rather more disappointed than the others to have missed out on bowling together. "It would have been the first time in almost exactly ten years that we would have shared the new ball," van der Wath told Supercricket website. "The last time we did it was for Easterns in 1997 when we were both teenagers. We were looking forward to revisiting old times."

India are scheduled to play two warm-up games over the weekend and will be hoping that rain does not hamper their plans.

Meanwhile, Kumar Sangakkara, the Sri Lanka wicketkeeper, will resume duties in the tri-series after a break from keeping in the recently concluded Test series against South Africa. "It's just 50 overs or less he has to keep wickets. Hence, there is no problem in using him as the wicketkeeper," Asantha de Mel, the Sri Lankan chairman of selectors, told Daily News, a Colombo-based newspaper.

The idea behind retaining Sangakkara as wicketkeeper-batsman is to have the option of selecting an extra bowler or batsman depending on the conditions. Sangakkara was replaced as wicketkeeper by Prasanna Jayawardene so that he could concentrate on his batting.

Sangakkara scored a double hundred and was involved in a record-breaking 624-run partnership with Mahela Jayawardene in the first Test at Colombo. However, Prasanna Jayawardene has also been included in the 14-member squad for the tri-series.