It has been three days since Sri Lanka collapsed in Cardiff. As unexpected and inexplicable as their capitulation seemed to everyone watching, Kumar Sangakkara says he knows exactly what went wrong. "It was a case of being mentally confused," he explains. "'What are we going to do?' We needed to decide one way or the other. Are we going to attack and score the runs? Or are we going to make sure we block out the first 30 overs? Those are the decisions that can change a match. You do need to strike a balance, but we didn't do either."
There were mitigating circumstances. The weather was terrible and the match seemed to be all but over. Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene were only recently returned from the IPL. The side have a new captain and a stand-in coach, and have lost two of their key players in Muttiah Muralitharan and Lasith Malinga. Sangakkara, however, is having none of it. "If you are a good side and you pride yourself on being a good side, those are the little mental stumbling blocks that you face along the way and that you should be good enough to surmount. We weren't in Cardiff."
"It's not something you want to reflect upon," Sangakkara says. "It is something you want to forget." And in a way that explains why, when the rest of his team-mates are holed up in their hotel, Sangakkara has come up to visit the Terrence Higgins Trust in King's Cross. For the last four years or so he has been an ambassador for the International Cricket Council's Think Wise campaign, a partnership with UNAIDS and UNICEF that works to eliminate stigma and discrimination and promote HIV and Aids awareness. The Test playing nations are home to around a third of the world's population living with HIV.
"Perspective is something you need when you play any sport," says Sangakkara after talking to an eclectic group of people who live with HIV and who work as carers, administrators and activists. "It has been great to actually meet people rather than just talk into a camera about HIV and HIV awareness. To meet people who live with HIV and face challenges every day that we only talk about, that is something that really opens your eyes." His team's woes in Cardiff seem very far away indeed.
At this point I could have just lost your attention. Kumar Sangakkara in the sport section? You want to hear what he has to say about England's bowling attack, surely, and how unhappy he was with the cold weather in Cardiff, and if the senior players in his side need to take more responsibility. Sangakkara touches on all these things, but none of them engages him like HIV. He is too intelligent, too erudite and too inquiring to confine his mind to cricket. And besides, he has not come to talk about himself.
"I am here to learn as much as anything else," Sangakkara tells his audience, which includes a few people who have no idea who he is. "I am very privileged to be here among you, to talk to you and, more than that, to listen to you. Because when I do put my face out there for the ICC I would like to be informed as much as possible, to be able to back up what I say with factual knowledge." And so for the next 40 minutes or so he sits and talks and listens. To Andrew Harvey from HIVsport, who tells him how people with HIV are not able to play contact sport because of misconceptions about the risks of infection among coaches and players.
To Nimisha Tanna from Body & Soul, who talks about a survey that found that, while 81% of school children knew you could not get HIV from a cup, 27% of them would not share a cup with someone who had HIV. It is this stigmatisation that is the biggest obstacle the HIV charities face. It has been 30 years since the first case of HIV was diagnosed in the UK, and the public image of the illness is still defined by the negative, scare-mongering publicity campaigns of the 1980s.
"I think sport is a great way to change that," says Sangakkara. "It is always going to be something like sport that brings people together, that stops there being that separation of people with HIV from everyone else." In Sri Lanka, Sangakkara says, "cricket has been the heal-all of social evils, the one thing that held the country together during 30 years of war."
Perhaps that explains why he believes so strongly that sport can help this cause. Though he admits that if he goes back and talks about what he has been doing with the team, he "would just be a couple of cursory nods and that would be it." He says that one of the frustrations of being a Think Wise ambassador is that as one man he cannot make much difference. He is a little ashamed that none of his team-mates or opponents is here with him.
When you start talking about sportspeople and charity work, cynicism comes cheap and easy. Some handshakes here, a photo opportunity or two there, and then it is back in the limo. Sangakkara is not like that. He asked to come to the Terrence Higgins Trust. He wants to engage with and understand the cause he is trying to promote. "If I do something I make sure I try and seriously commit to it. With time, with effort, with knowledge, whichever way I can. If you come here and look the people in the eye they will know instantly whether you are actually here or not, or whether you are just fulfilling your obligations to the ICC. I owe it not just to myself and to my role but to the people I meet and the people I aim to help to actually believe in what I am doing."
The only photographers are amateurs, and the two journalists are here almost as an afterthought. "Whatever you do it is not about doing it in front of 20 cameras," Sangakkara says. "It is when there are no cameras and no one there to write about it or talk about it. That is when you actually do something worthwhile to help people."
The Lord's Test seems far away. But Sangakkara lets his thoughts turn back to it, if only because us journalists make him talk about it. His record in England is unusually shabby, with an average of 27 in 14 Test innings, something he is keen to put right now. "This time around is where I should really be delivering, so coming here to score runs is really something I have looked forward to this time and I have two Tests to try and do that in."
With Steve Finn likely to join Chris Tremlett and Stuart Broad in England's attack, he will have to do so against one of the tallest bowling units cricket has ever seen. "I think that out of all the sub-continent sides we play bounce a lot better than most. But everyone around the world will struggle against bounce and good bowling. It is just a case of making sure you are up to the challenges that are coming at you, if it is Finn, or Tremlett or Broad you know what you are going to get."
Beyond those immediate challenges, you sense that part of Sangakkara's mind is already fixed on what he will do once he retires. Perhaps, like Sanath Jayasuriya, he will become a politician. More likely he will, like Murali, dabble in a little Twenty20 and beaver away on his charity work. "Sri Lankan people they look up to cricket as something a bit more than a sport," he says. "It is something that has helped them through a lot of strife. That responsibility doesn't wash off easily when you step out of your cricketing clothes. It is something that will definitely be ongoing."
