Troops on the streets are nothing new to Colombo's citizens

The England team is due in Sri Lanka on 13 November and thousands of fans are expected to arrive both on organised tours and as solo travellers.

Tour operators said it was too early to tell whether people would change their travel plans in the wake of the upheaval, which has seen President Chandrika Kumaratunga sack three cabinet members while her personal and political rival, Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe, was in Washington DC.

But they were at pains to stress that despite Ms Kumaratunga's decision to declare a state of emergency, the row was political and was unlikely to spill over into endangering visitors.

"There is no change to the ceasefire agreement which has been in place for the past two years," said Aitken Spence, Sri Lanka's biggest travel firm, in an e-mail to its agents overseas.

"The security situation in the country remains the same. This incident has not affected the day to day life in the country as well as tourist movements at all."

Troops on the streets, some pointed out, are nothing new after the recent 18-year state of emergency.

Boom time

The tourism trade has seen a marked improvement over the 20 months since a ceasefire to end two decades of civil war was signed in February 2002.

Tourists are returning to the island

The Sri Lanka Tourist Board is hoping for 500,000 visitors in 2003, an increase of more than 25% over the year before.

New hotel rooms are being built to accommodate the expansion - as many as 3,000 over the 14,000 or so currently available.

Part of the boom has come from Tamils heading home for the first time in decades, as well as from foreigners.

Throughout the conflict, the Tamil-dominated north and east was cut off from the rest of the island as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam fought a bloody war, often using suicide bombers and child soldiers, for a separate homeland.

The Tigers are thought to be unlikely to challenge the ceasefire in the short term.

But even if the squabble between Mr Wickramasinghe and Ms Kumaratunga stays in the political arena, some fear damage to Sri Lanka's nascent reputation for stability, and cancellations in November and December.

Shares in Aitken Spence fell sharply on Wednesday, amid a general stock market selloff which saw the Colombo all-share index slump 13%.

Playing on?

As far as the cricket is concerned, though, agents in the UK are still betting on the tour going ahead.

Travel companies contacted by BBC News Online said they had had a handful of calls from concerned customers.

But they said they would continue to advise travellers to go ahead unless the Foreign Office advised otherwise - or unless the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) called off the tour.