Sri Lanka spinner Muttiah Muralitharan has called for greater support for the island's fishermen after visiting the south coast with team mates to hand out aid to tsunami victims.
Muralitharan, one of the world's leading players and a United Nations ambassador for the World Food Programme, said he was "deeply shocked" after visiting Hambantota, a fishing town where locals say up to 15,000 people are dead or missing.
The densely populated beachfront centre of the town and a local market, packed with around 4,000 traders and shoppers, was decimated by giant waves early on Boxing Day morning.
"I have now seen so many towns and villages along the east and south coasts, many of which were hit extremely badly, but I'm deeply shocked by what I have seen here -- this town is probably the worst affected," Muralitharan told reporters.
Fishermen, living in temporary plastic tents on the rubble of their homes, told Muralitharan that only about five of the town's 400 fishing trawlers were seaworthy while most of their traditional sea canoes had also been destroyed.
"We need to help them," Muralitharan added. "They have lost parents, wives, children and the pain they are going through is terrible.
"The main thing in this town was fishing and now they have nothing. They need help to rebuild their livelihoods and become self-sufficient once more."
The United Nations estimate that some 7,500 fishermen have been confirmed dead with at least 5,600 reported missing. Around 18,500 fishing vessels are believed to have been destroyed, about 80 per cent of the island's fishing fleet.
Muralitharan, accompanied by Sri Lanka vice-captain Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Nuwan Zoysa and Avishka Gunawardene, visited 10 emergency relief camps during a two-day tour around Galle, Matara, Tangalle and Hanbantota.
The cricketers, who helped distribute five lorries of food, medicine, clothing, eating utensils and toys, were representing the cricket board's disaster assistance programme called Cricket-Aid.
The aid convoy was the third organised by Muralitharan, who played for an Asian XI against a World XI in a fundraising match for tsunami victims in Melbourne last week.
While in Habantota they met the captain of the town's cricket club, Shihan Singwansa, who told how his mother, brother and seven of his team mates had been killed.
Children, many now orphans, were thrilled to see their cricket heroes and implored them to play softball cricket with them.
"Some of the children still seem to be in shock," said Sangakkara. "The full magnitude of what they have been through has not yet sunk in."
Sri Lanka's cricket board has organised counselling for tsunami survivors and set up emergency relief camps in the southern town of Matara and Mullaitivu on the east coast. Further camps are being set-up, with plans for the construction of at least four resettlement villages around the island.
