Sure, cricket on a beach on the isle of Jura is different from a Test match in a stadium in Galle, 6000 miles away, despite the sea air.

The most appealing side-effect of Sri Lankan cricket from where I stand, shuffling words, has been linguistic.

Cricket fans all over the world probably have more in common with each other than with their fellow citizens.

In London, I discovered a peculiar building by Holland Park where the globe was shrunk to fit a British perspective, but which had a library with Sri Lankan books I had never seen before.

In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live.

In writing, I try to find the right balance between momentum and infinity, truth and beauty.