Steve James and Andrew Flintoff - the former an experienced county player on his first representative tour, the latter a mature 20-year-old of whom much is expected - stood firm as many of their team-mates wavered in the wake of last weekend's bomb blast in Kandy which claimed 12 lives.

There was widespread and open concern in the party but the unlikely pair talked their colleagues into staying put when more experienced heads were seeking to catch the first plane home.

The Management were non-committal, asking whether a squad of unhappy players - nine under 21 - could perform at their best if their minds were not on the job. The England and Wales Cricket Board backed the view that the team should stay unless the situation deteriorated. Chief executive Tim Lamb went so far, reportedly, as to tell Nick Knight, the England A captain, that his charges were being wet.

That was certainly the view of the Zimbabweans, who were staying in the same hotel in Colombo. Their tour manager, Malcolm Jarvis, who fought in the Rhodesian bush war in the 1970s, was nonplussed at the fuss being made by England A. It seems clear that the danger here to tourists and sportsmen alike can be no greater than on the British mainland during terrorist bomb campaigns. From the beginning of the week, it has been business as usual, with Sri Lankans going about their daily life and tourists continuing their holidays. The thousand or so British nationals who live here have been unmoved, as have the many British contract workers.

European tourists yesterday trooped round the sights in Kandy where hotels are at near 100 per cent occupancy - as I and another journalist found when we discovered our first-choice hotel was full. This move from the England team hotel in the jungle near Kurunegala had become necessary owing to communications problems there.

England A were happily cocooned there yesterday, much more relaxed than they had been in Colombo and glad to be going home 10 days early. After this first Test, they move to the safe south coast until the end of the tour.

The party have been promised that if there is another bomb though it has to be a big one apparently - they will be on the next plane home. It would be laughable if England A were, after all, to come home before the conclusion of the rescheduled tour on Feb 21. They will be well away from the terrorists' known targets, Colombo and Kandy, housed along with thousands of other tourists in whom the terrorists have no interest. Indeed, throughout the 16-year-long war, their refusal to target tourists and sportsmen has been absolute.