Virender Sehwag doesn't go easy on the bowlers even in the nets © AFP

The song Koi karta hoga mera intezaar (some one will be waiting for me) fills the air on a humid afternoon. Virender Sehwag is the singer. That shouldn't raise eyebrows but Sehwag is singing while thumping the bowlers in the nets. Alongside him, Tendulkar asks Munaf Patel to move away from his position behind the bowler's arm. I park myself at a wicketkeeper's eye view, just behind the netting to watch the guru and shishya (disciple) go about their business.

The bat speed of Sehwag is mesmerizing. He places his bat just before the instep of the back foot, with bat facing first slip, and keeps still as the bowler releases. Then the furious activity begins. The feet move a little, just enough to maintain balance and get him going towards the ball but, more importantly, making room for his bat to come crashing down. The head remains still, absolutely still. And that wrist-cock gets the bat down in a marvellous blur. He is constantly trying to score runs off every ball. No dead-batting unless the ball is really a gem. If he can't hit it hard, he is trying to open the bat-face and run it into imagined gaps.

And he constantly teases the bowlers. "Patha nahi chal raha hai na, kidhar daaloon, kya karoon? (Struggling to find where to bowl, eh?), he asks one of the spinners. Both the bowler and the batsman laugh. Sehwag keeps watching Tendulkar bat, passing comments, “Shot Master! Wah ji Wah! (bravo).” He also pulls Tendulkar's leg now and then by praising the bowler who has got the better of him. Tendulkar simply laughs.

After hitting one straight back at Suresh Raina, Sehwag shouts, "Now I have to hit you. Tere ko Mendis & Murali thodi banney denge (I am not going to allow you to become a Mendis or a Murali.) The next Raina delivery is deposited to the long-on boundary with mischievous laughter.

It's all not fun, though. Sehwag asks bowlers what their field positions are and tries various shots and predicts how many runs each stroke will fetch. He also tells the bowler how well he is bowling or what is lacking. He focuses on his footwork, taking care that the trigger movement is not affecting the arc of the bat.

	Sachin Tendulkar is always experimenting during practice sessions © AFP

Tendulkar too seems to be having lots of fun. He punches Praveen Kumar on-the-up straight past him and asks, "Pakad leta usko?" (You would have stopped that?). The next ball, he reprises the shot with more punch and this time there is no need to ask that question.

Once he mistimes a short-of-length ball down the wicket and tells a curious Sehwag - who wonders why Tendulkar didn't whip it through midwicket - that he is trying something new with his back lift. So I crouch to watch as well. The top hand is limp, there is minimal back lift as the bat tilts into position, ready and waiting for the ball to arrive, before he thumps the ball hard, taking care to hit it straight past the bowler. There’s only a tiny arc of the bat but it imparts tremendous velocity to the ball at the moment of impact.

Sehwag, meanwhile, moves into the nets where Gary Kirsten is giving throw downs. The teasing continues. "Don't bowl there, mate!" Sehwag says after he plays a feisty square cut. "I don't want you to feel low in confidence before a game," replies Kirsten to which Sehwag laughs before turning serious. "Just try to bowl dot balls and as tight as possible. I will try to see how I can get them away for singles and twos." He punches one on the up and says, "Lovely! That is a Tendulkar shot."

And his guru has moved to the spin nets and is now trying various shots: paddle-sweeps, late-cuts, slog-sweeps, and even reverse-sweeps. Once, Tendulkar’s leg stump is pegged back by Ojha after he misses a jumping switch-hit. "It was in the slot yaar," says Tendulkar. Towards the end of the session, Tendulkar leans forward, bends his knees, and scoops a flighted delivery around off and middle over the slips. "Two runs," exclaims Tendulkar. "And that's enough for the day now. Let's go." Tendulkar and Sehwag walk out of the batting nets. The photographers too left, humming Koi Karta hoga ....

	Ajith Perera, the first Sri Lankan to qualify as a professional umpire © Cricinfo Ltd

On December 12, 1992, a 35-year old Ajith Perera got the letter he had spent years waiting for. The man who became the first Sri Lankan to qualify as the professional umpire after a final exam at Lord's in 1985 was about to stand in his first Test, between Sri Lanka v New Zealand, when it happened. He read the appointment letter a few times and left the board office to get back home to share the proud moment with his parents.

He didn’t get home for the next two years. It was a stormy day and Perera was sitting in his car with the letter when nature intervened. A big wayside tree crashed against the car, killing the driver and instantly rendering Perera a paraplegic for life.

But the Perera story began where it might have ended for him. An author of two books, and a campaigner for better access in public spaces for the mobility-disabled people, and speaks without a trace of self-pity. If anything, there is an awareness of his mental strength and a pride in overcoming the greatest obstacle that had killed his biggest dream.

"Retired hurt but not out," Perera says with a crackling laugh that blows away your hesitation about bringing up the accident. It doesn't feel nice to call up someone and ask him to speak about something that you yourself would not have been talking to a stranger about had it happened to you. But Perera puts you at ease and uses the conversation to ask you to highlight his battles for public access.

Perera runs an organisation and has worked with hotels like the Taj Samudra to make it friendlier to mobility-handicapped people. But he has been unable to convince the Sri Lankan board. "None of the cricket stadiums in Sri Lanka are friendly to people like me. I have written to the board, to the sports minister several times but no action has been taken. Aren't we a part of the society? Don't we have a right to see a cricket match?"

Perera has been to a cricket ground only once after his accident. The British High Commission invited him to its box in a 2003 Test match for a day. "The toilets were non-usable for people like me and it was a really unpleasant experience."

We return to his accident to understand how he was inspired to get back to living his life. Perera was lying on the bed in the General Hospital for ten months before help came. A chartered-chemist by profession, he was a fellow of the chemical society and was taken to London for treatment. Back home, there were no experts in dealing with spinal-cord injuries and he slowly recovered in London. There he learnt "how small things in your immediate surroundings, access, people, can make the life easy for people like me". He decided that once he returned to Colombo his life ambition would be to use his "ability in this disability" to improve things for handicapped people.

And he has not restrained himself to only that. Alongside his umpiring exams, he also qualified as an advanced scorer and as a trained umpiring instructor, besides helping the Sri Lanka Board in administration of the 1996 World Cup. The 2000 Wisden Almanack recognised him as one of the ‘cricket people of 1999'. That was then.

Currently, his battle for the welfare of the disabled is still on. "The World Cup is coming here in two years. Will the stadiums be friendlier? Don't herd us like a cattle in a group in some corner. How about opening small enclosures on either side of the pavilion?" Is Sri Lanka Cricket willing to listen, though?

Key numbers jotted down during a joint press conference given by Mahela Jayawardene and Mahendra Singh Dhoni in Colombo on Monday.

30 minutes: The delay (the captains were on time but a minister was late)

1 minute: Before the standard "It's great for the youngsters to seize the opportunity" line was mentioned. By both captains.

9 mins: Before the first Dhoni wisecrack. Asked whether the lack of recent international cricket would affect the team, he said: "It depends on the result of the first match. If we win, people will say we were fresh, if we lose, we were rusty!"

12 mins: Before the first tricky question (and evasive answer). After Dhoni said Sri Lankan wickets could behave strangely, a local reporter asked, "Don't the Indian wickets behave funnily?" Jayawardene said, "I haven't played in India for a while now".

13 mins: Before Ajantha Mendis' name was brought up by a reporter. Dhoni's reply: "No special plans. We played him pretty well the last time we came here. It's just up to the individuals to pick him from his hand."

17 mins: Before Jayawardene's poor form was questioned. "Obviously I am trying hard. It's not easy that you have so many games coming at you all the time. It's about just working hard at the nets and I am doing that."

Finally, 10 seconds: before those assembled dispersed, after the press conference ended, to the drinks counter.

"You look frightening. You should shave." Since it came from a woman I’ve known for three decades, I just shrugged it aside before leaving for the Bangalore airport. Mothers can be cruel. She had another piece of advice, which I will come to later.

"What's the purpose of your visit?" "Cricket" brings a smile and a favourable quick stamp on the passport at the visa counter in Colombo airport. He starts to ask something – my guess it was about Indian cricketers – but, maybe because I’m fat, bearded and generally looking like the kind of person you don't want to introduce your daughter to, the question stopped in his throat. I need to shave. He might have had a pretty daughter.

The information desk tells me the taxi fare to the hotel will cost me 2300 Sri Lankan rupees. That will get me 80 shaves in the hole in the wall back home. I decide to take the bus and bump into Jehan.

"Are you from Punjab?" he asks. I need to shave. "I know Hindi as I work in Dubai and know many Indians. Lots of Kerala people, you know; 70% of the workers. They tend to keep to themselves and don't move around with others much." The airport bus takes us to a depot where Jehan helps me to get another that will take me to Colombo. He even calls up the hotel and finds out I should pay a maximum of 200 rupees as auto fare after I get down from the bus in the city. And, as he leaves, he shakes my hand and says, expansively, "Welcome to Sri Lanka". I bet it's something he always wanted to say. It's something that I have also wanted to say – India, of course, not Sri Lanka– but it comes a distant second after "This is how it all happened," a la Hercule Poirot.

The bus is a rickety van, just like you would find in Indian towns. The curtain has been unwashed for months; the dark-film coating on the window is peeling off at places and in spite of my baggage blocking the narrow aisle, the passengers just hop over the barricade without any complaints. As I push aside the curtain, Aishwarya Rai smiles at me from a hoarding. A little while into the journey, Shahrukh Khan says, "Hello Sri Lanka, it's nice to be here," in a banner for a telecom company, and Mahela Jayawardene tries to sell me a soft drink throughout the journey. The biggest hoarding, though, belongs to Ajantha Mendis, who thrusts a meat ball at me; alas, the middle finger is not bent.

"You a Pakistani?" asks the auto driver, who, like his Indian counterparts, won't settle for anything less than 250 rupees. I really need that shave. "Petrol costly, so auto costly," he explains. As the auto, without any sign of a meter, rolls along the deserted Sunday-evening road punctuated by army patrols, he puts me at ease. "No worry. You can walk in the evenings. Safe. One more week and this (the current military offensive against LTTE) will finish."

I check into a hotel near the President's house and immediately set out to explore the area. A little further away, I spot a small, bustling tea shop. I park myself in a chair, sipping my tea amid dim lights, busy waiters and Tamil film music in the air. An announcer in the lovely Lankan Tamil twang gives details of the next song. Memories of Radio Ceylon and 'Adhutha Padal' flood in. If you want to smoke, go to that room, a boy says, pointing to a cell-like inner room.

"Don't speak in Tamil there. Fight going on … ille?" Those were my mother's final words as I left my home. "Thalaiva, inga shave panre edam enga? (Where can I get a shave here?)," I ask a waiter in Tamil. He warms up and. On learning why I’m here, predicts that Sri Lanka will beat India.

With a smile, I head to Raja Salon, a hole-in-the-wall barber shop. A Sinhalese version of Mind Your Language is playing on the wall-mounted TV and the three barbers in the shop laugh away as they bend over the customers' heads with scissors. A multi-armed goddess sitting on a tiger is framed on the wall and an old wall-clock hung at a rakish angle. Just like in India. But unlike the Indian version, where you would find dated decades-old film magazines with a pouting, teasing Sridevi on the cover and all the dope on the Amitabh-Rekha affair inside, this one had only newspapers and a political magazine.

After getting a thinly trimmed beard that run in sharp lines on my face for 80 rupees, I go back to the tea shop where the boy nods approvingly at my appearance and walk around again for a while before heading back to the hotel around 9.30 pm. It's a budget hotel that I had checked into just for the night but the room is spacious and the bed is huge with three pillows. Who did they think I was, Caligula? The view from the balcony is mesmeric. The sea in all its splendour spreads out to the horizon and the gentle lapping of the waves is really soothing. Shahrukh was right. It's nice to be here in the tear-shaped island. And I promise cricket from the next post.