Xtraaa Innings

When South African fast bowler Makhaya Ntini spotted two sultry young women throwing seductive glances at him in the Taj Samudra hotel lobby, he must have thought it was his lucky night out. The revealing dresses and their amorous gaze soon had the strapping fast bowler saunter over. Ntini brimmed with the cool confidence of a famous Test player, eager for action. His only problem: the following day was the semi-final match against India.

"He was all ours post-match, if we wanted him," said one of the girls. Inviting them over for a drink, and palpably yorked by their charms, Ntini indicated he wanted to spend the night with them both, but turned down requests for an introduction to other team members. They exchanged numbers, and he told them when he could be contacted.

The following morning one of the women contacted Ntini over the phone hoping to fix plans for the night. Was he or any other team member willing to pay, she asked gingerly. Ntini was evasive: "Why do I need to pay?" The woman replied, "Use your imagination?" The conversation continued, both playing off each other. Plans for the night were ultimately aborted with Ntini unwilling to pay for sex.

What Ntini didn't know was that the two girls were journalists. The Colombo-based English weekly The Sunday Leader had asked reporters Mandana Ismail Abeywickrema and Marianne David to masquerade as call girls, hoping for a scoop. The sumptuous Taj Samudra Hotel where cricketers from 12 countries, here for the Champions Trophy, were staying seemed the right place. Right through the tourney the lobby thronged with women eager to court the players who, with long gaps between matches, were not averse to a few nights laced with passion.

Cricketers womanising on tours is nothing new. What startled many were stories of high-society call girls stalking the hotel. Indeed, a few days before The Leader's reporters tried to bait Ntini, the elite Ministerial Security Division (MSD) of the Sri Lanka Police had written to ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed giving details of women found in the rooms of two West Indies team officials. The msd letter said three females, Shanas I. Perera, 32, Caroline R. Premakuwara, 17, and Shelani P. Gunaratene, were found in the rooms of team manager Ricky Skerritt, and computer operator Garfield Smith on September 14 and 15. Skerritt later denied the women were call girls, testifying to their "impeccable" character. Meanwhile, alleging the msd had adopted high-handed tactics, the West Indies team asked for withdrawal of the security cover. The team subsequently stayed at the Taj as ordinary guests during the last six days of their stay.

It was clearly not the cricketers alone who were on the prowl. The Leader's Marianne was invited by Holland team coach Emmerson Trotman who told her they could spend the last two hours of his stay in Colombo together. Marianne recalls, "Trotman confessed he had spent Rs 28,000 in Sri Lanka and he said if he had met me earlier, he would've spent it on me." Trotman was also willing to delay his departure for her. "He was upset over the players getting all the attention from the women." Trotman also gifted her a mobile phone card the local board had provided him.

In fact, Trotman had propositioned Marianne even though he knew she was a journalist. Nothing seemed to hold them back, especially the more randy cricketers. The week before, two Kenyan players had invited Marianne and her colleague to a party late in the night. And the Lankan liaison officer of the Australian team even offered to "sponsor" her.

The msd was the only 'irritating' impediment in the cricketers' escapades. Their services were requested by the icc to guard against bookies or match-fixers approaching players and officials.The elite security unit, however, couldn't establish any connection between the women and bookmakers. Nor was there any solid evidence to link the women to prostitution rings. "We didn't get any evidence. But bellboys and others at the hotel did tell officers that some of the women were regulars and that they were call girls," a senior msd officer told Outlook.

The officer says the msd had no intention of preventing players from consorting with the opposite sex. What raised their heckles was the rude response of some cricketers to any questioning. For instance, when the msd stopped a player from taking three women up to his room, he argued against what he thought was an intrusion on his privacy—and then declared he was taking his lady friends to another hotel.

The cops say some of the women could belong to vice rings. For Colombo boasts a thriving sex industry. Massage parlours run by local and foreign women are as easy to find as foreign prostitutes, especially from Russia and Thailand. One five-star hotel operates a massage parlour where Thai girls render 'services'. And the city hosts several bustling discos and casinos, some of which cater only to foreigners.

A fortnight was long enough for both the cricketers and the women to devise ingenious methods to evade the msd. Some took to meeting women outside. Others like Ntini asked them to rent rooms in the hotel itself. The msd was authorised to keep a tab on cricketers entertaining guests in their rooms, but it wasn't required to regulate their visits elsewhere.

If Colombo's experience suggests anything it's that the next big story in international cricket could be someone unravelling a link between bookmakers and call girls who service Test players.