On their way to the ground, the Aussies would have been reading a scathing attack aimed at them, and carried in Sri Lanka's oldest daily, The Observer
``Imperialist running dogs,'' the newspaper called the Aussies, borrowing the term from the jargon of the Mao- ist revolutionaries of China. And the paper, in a scathing article, justified the use of the term to describe the Aussie cricketers, pointing out that ``When the Chinese revolutionaries coined the term, they were referring not only to the aggressiveness of the Western invaders, but also to the cowardliness and uncouthness that hid behind the brute force by the powerful over the weak.''
The edit piece, carried prominently on the front page of Friday's issue of the paper, was a direct assault on the conduct of Australian cricket team manager Cam Battersby during a news conference in Colombo.
The hard-hitting piece, unusual by the normally sedate standards of the paper, was sparked by Battersby's remark at a press conference in Colombo when he said that he would not entertain any questions about the past - an obvious bid to prevent questions relating to Sri Lanka's contentious tour of Australia earlier this year, or Australia's boycott of the league match in Colombo during the Wills World Cup.
``What kind of decent chaps will enter someone else's home and arbitrarily impose conditions on his host?'' the pa- per asked.
Battersby was not available for comment.
Meanwhile, the Australians had reason to be less than pleased about their performance in the field. In the warm up game against the Lankan colts, the Aussies could manage only 251 for seven in fifty overs, while just managing to restrict the Colts to 246 for seven in the same number of overs.
The only silver lining came from Ricky Ponting, who blasted 103 not out off 199 balls with two sixes and nine fours before retiring. Ian Healy, taking over as Aussie skipper following a back injury to Mark Taylor, scored 47 to help lend respectability to the Aussie total.
The Sri Lankan Colts, the second best national team, made the Aussies sweat with a run chase that saw them fall just five short of the target.
The match was played inside a top security police com- plex in Colombo. As many as 500 policemen, aided by the military, were deployed to prevent any Tamil rebel attack on the players. There were hardly 1,000 spectators, and most of them were believed to be policemen in plain clothes.
The bad news for the tourists was that Brad Hogg, picked to replace injured leg-spinner Shane Warne, proved a dismal failure while conceeding 33 runs in four overs before being removed from the attack.
Though Australia would prefer to concentrate on the forthcoming five-Test series against the West Indies, and on the tours of England and South Africa to follow, a defeat in the Singer Cup and that too to Lanka - could have a damaging effect on the team's morale.
Australia is scheduled to play its first game of the tournament on August 26, when it takes on Zimbabwe. They will face Sri Lanka on August 30, and India on September five.
As per the tournament format, all four teams will play each other once, and the two top teams at the end of this round robin will contest the final on September seven.