Above is the President’s sons featured in a commercial by a state-owned telco which I saw on state-owned television. Which is, I dunno, but the two youngest sons seem to be playing in the Carlton Super 7s, which I think is broadcast on CSN, which is run by Yoshitha Rajapaksa’s girlfriend. Anyways. He was also recently made captain of the Sri Lanka rugby team, to some chagrin. I’ve heard that the boys are actually quite good at rugby, but still. It still looks a bit dodge.

Today on the morning show we talked about the Olympics, namely China’s emerging dominance. For me the bigger question is India. Why does India suck so much? In 2008 the US won 110 medals, China won 100 and India won… 3. India has over a billion people, some economic clout and is by all counts an emerging superpower, but they suck at the Olympics. Why?

The T20 Cricket World Cup (which will be awesome) is happening in Sri Lanka this year. Tickets are on sale now. There are multiple ways to get tickets, but only the link above really works. Boycy and I tried most, so I’ll get into them here.

Sri Lanka lost the finals to Australia. Which sucks. However, this is the first series I’ve watched since the World Cup, which is a very good thing. After the political debacle that was the World Cup Final a lot of people just stopped watching. When the captains resigned, the cricket board fought with Malinga, and the players went unpaid for six months, I think even the players lost some faith. That’s back now. So we won something.

In a good way. Some of the boys from Sri Lanka’s local fight night scene are competing in an Indian martial arts tournament this weekend. It’s called Super Fight League and all of Bollywood will be there.

If Sri Lanka wins a cricket match you can potentially have a happy conversation with anybody on the island. Mix that with the Internet and you get an explosion of Facebook memes. Here’s a few.

The landlord is out and it’s too damn hot to watch the match through the neighbor’s open door. Luckily, thanks to @ramishkad on Twitter I found a place to watch online – crictime.com. It’s a stream of Star Cricket, presumably without permission, but I’m watching the ads with some gratefulness.

I don’t own a TV, but when the cricket is on, all televisions are socialized. They’re all tuned to the same channel and anybody can watch. Last time I watched through the window at the TV store, along with like a hundred people. This time I just watched or followed wherever I was. People say that cricket is too long, but they misunderstand how it is consumed. Cricket really isn’t watched at all, it’s lived. It becomes part of the community, and part of your day.

Any important match, you can find Sri Lankans crowded around the TV shops, watching through the window. I watched bits of the India match at the mall, along with like 75 other people. They were lined up outside Abans, the Sony Store, any place with a TV.

The word surf seems to be derived from the word suffe, a reference to the coastline of India, but the sport isn’t very popular there. Despite having 7,500 km of coastline, India is not known for beaches, let alone for surfing. Slowly, however, it seems that a surf culture is emerging mixed in parts with Hindu spirituality.