Pakistan's cricket team has been told by the government to skip the February 15 game in Colombo after Bangladesh were replaced by Scotland for refusing to play its games in India.
India skipper Suryakumar Yadav emphasizes the importance of a positive dressing room environment for tactical flexibility and making tough decisions to improve team performance in cricket.
A look back at a few memorable showdowns in the last decade and half that had the quintessential crests and troughs of Test cricket.
The Sri Lankan government on Sunday lifted the ban it had imposed on social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram after declaring a nationwide public emergency and effecting a 36-hour curfew ahead of a planned anti-government rally over the worst economic crisis in the island nation.
The move is aimed at preventing masses from gathering in Colombo to protest the government's failure to provide relief to the public suffering from shortages of food, essentials, fuel and medicine amidst hours-long power cuts, the Colombo Page newspaper reported.
The Government also defended the President's decision to enforce a state of emergency, that had given him sweeping authority to act in the interests of public security and preserving public order, including suspending any laws, authorising detentions and seizing property, saying it was declared after attempts were made to attack the President's Office and other public property.
Fresh from their series-levelling victory in the second Test against Sri Lanka in Colombo, some Indian players including captain Virat Kohli were seen enjoying a game of badminton.
Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa dissolved Parliament on March 2 and the general election was scheduled on April 25.
The presidential secretariat which was occupied by the protesters from July 9 till Friday last is re-opened and the staff reported to work on Monday, officials said.
Seven Indian fishermen have been arrested by Sri Lankan navy for allegedly poaching in the country's waters in North Western province, media reported on Wednesday.
The violence occurred following reports on Monday that Mahinda Rajapksa may offer to stand down as Prime Minister.
President Rajapaksa, through a special gazette last month, appointed the 13-member task force for the establishment of a 'One Country, One Law' concept in Sri Lanka and comprised members from the majority Sinhala and minority Muslim communities.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office on Monday said that Mahinda Rajapaksa intends to propose a new Constitutional Amendment to the cabinet in order to fulfil the people's aspirations.
The government's poor handling of the economic crisis where people currently endure long hours of power outages and scarcity of essentials has angered the public which planned country-wide protests on Sunday.
Ppolitical experts in Colombo said the ministers came under intense pressure from the public over the government's alleged "mishandling" of the economic crisis, triggered by the shortage in the foreign exchange reserve.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned on Monday, hours after his supporters attacked anti-government protesters outside embattled President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office, leaving at least 78 people injured and prompting authorities to impose a nationwide curfew and deploy army troops in the capital.
Their release on Monday came as Lanka and India completed the formalities for the release of fishermen detained in each other's country for allegedly fishing in each other's waters, Colombo Page reported.
'The ban is to ensure national security... No one should obscure their faces to make identification difficult,' Sirisena's office said in a statement.
'But he was very quick and did a very stylish adab.' 'Of course, I didn't expect him to hug.'
There have been reports that the Rajapaksa brothers, which dominates the current Sri Lankan government, are not on the same page. Gota, it is said, is not on the same wave length as his elder brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the former president, or Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa, who is seen to be the family's strategist.
'The Rajapaksas have been in active politics for decades and survived many challenges, but they seem to have misread this one.'
President Maithripala Sirisena said Friday that over 130 suspects linked to the Islamic State terror group have been operating in the country.
'India has given assistance that we required, otherwise we would not have been able to survive this far.'
Seven persons had been arrested in connection with the blasts.
The alleged mastermind of the Pune German Bakery blast, Himayat Baig, was trained to assemble explosives in Colombo by two of the co-accused in the case when they visited the Sri Lankan capital in March 2008, the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad has contended in the chargesheet submitted to the judicial magistrate in Pune.
In a significant move coinciding with the visit of a top United States official probing war crimes, the American embassy in Colombo on Thursday posted pictures of places where civilians had died allegedly during Sri Lanka's final war against rebel Tamil Tigers four years ago.
Five years before Rajiv Gandhi was killed in 1991, the US Central Intelligence Agency had prepared a very detailed and thorough "brief" on what would happen if he is assassinated or makes an "abrupt departure" from the Indian political scene.
'Hindi-Chini Bhai Bhai? Don't you believe it. I don't trust the Chinese one bit,' Nehru told Gopalaswamy Parthasarathi before he traveled to China as India's ambassador. Asking GP to be ever vigilant, Nehru advised the diplomat to send telegrams on important matters only to him. Many such anecdotes from a long and eventful career as diplomat and bureaucrat crowd the pages of GP: 1912-1995, discovers Uttaran Das Gupta.
The code name for the terror plot to attack the US consulate in Chennai was "wedding hall" which was to be executed by "cooks", a code for terrorists who were to gain entry from Maldives into India.
The bonhomie between Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi was once again in evidence on Tuesday, but the question remains if it will translate into supporting the BJP in the Rajya Sabha. Senior journalist R Rajagopalan reports.
Taking strong exception to an alleged derogatory article about her on the Sri Lankan defence website, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Friday accused it of trying to create fissures in India's federal polity as she demanded an unconditional apology from Colombo for the insinuations against her.
'There is no audience anymore for my graphic novels. Few people seem interested in what I find interesting,' Sarnath Banerjee tells Uttaran Das Gupta.
'No, you don't require tantrums, or beating a tattoo on the helmet or rude and hostile gestures to make a point.' 'A true fast bowler lets the ball do the talking as it crashes into the stumps,' says veteran sports commentator Kishore Bhimani.
Italian model Mariana Falasachi gets candid.
'I kept telling Anurag, "I don't care about anything, I don't want any money. Just get the film made".' 'One day I called Anurag and someone else picked up the phone. He said, "Hello, Sir." I responded, "Hello, but who are you and why are you picking up Anurag's phone?" He said, "I am Ranbir Kapoor Sir". And he told me he was doing the film and he was very excited.'
Any official-level talks between India and Sri Lanka, without any clear-cut understanding on the livelihood issues, could end up in India having to acknowledge bilaterally even more than what it had no hesitation in accepting in Parliament and outside, says N Sathiya Moorthy
But this project is changing that -- one public artwork at a time.
Forty years after the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, the Sunanda K Datta-Ray recalls life when civil rights were suspended and press censorship was in force
'With the recent challenging of the notion of the Indian Ocean Region being India's strategic backyard, China is gradually upping the ante in the maritime realm around India.'
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