The no-show of the Indian team drew flak from Sri Lanka's minister for sports S B Dissanayake and from members of the three other teams. The Sri Lankan, Zimbabwe and Australian teams were present in full strength, the Indian team-members conspicuously absent.

``I really wish our friends from India were here, like the Australians,'' Dissanayake told the gathering, an hour after the reception got under way at the heavily guarded state guest house at Visumpaya. Lankan foreign minister Kahshman Kadirgamal, for his part, said he had dropped other engagements in order to meet the Indians. ``Why are they not here, have we made any mistake?'' Kadirgamal, himself an avid cricketer, asked.

India's ambassador in Colombo Nareshwar Dayal, in a rather hamhanded attempt to defuse the situation, informed the gathering that the team members wanted to rest ahead of their match against Australia - an explanation that sounded particularly false, given that the entire Australian contingent was present at the reception.

Indian team manager Samiran Chakraborty for his part indicated later that the no-show was due to the fact that the invitations had arrived late. ``We got the cards at 1000 hours, by that time we had already organised plans for the whole day and this party was not on it,'' Chakraborty said.

Again, what was meant to be an explanation could only have made a bad situation worse - after all, the reception was being hosted by the home government. Saying that the team members had better things to do with their time was not exactly calculated to earn the goodwill of the Lankan government, its cricketers or the people.

And besides, a Sri Lankan government spokesman pointedly denied that the cards had been sent late.

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