By Charles Haviland BBC News, Colombo

	Pakistan beat Sri Lanka at the Twenty20 World Cup finals

It starts just a week after the Pakistanis beat the Sri Lankans in the Twenty20 World Cup final at Lords.

Because of the militant attack on the Sri Lankans when they were touring Pakistan last March, security is a big issue.

The teams have been starting with a warm-up match on Monday.

But already the forces are being deployed to tighten security in the south-coast town of Galle, where Sri Lanka and Pakistan begin their first test match on Saturday.

First Test match

The police spokesman said those on duty include men from the army, navy, air force and police.

He said, however, that Sri Lanka’s security situation was, in general, good now: “there won’t be any problem”, he said.

This will be the first test match between these two nations since extremists attacked the Sri Lankans’ bus in Lahore earlier this year.

We’ll do whatever is necessary to assure their safe passage Sri Lanka team manager, Brendon Kuruppu

“We don’t want any touring team to go through a similar incident,” said Sri Lanka’s team manager Brendon Kuruppu, referring to the attack in which several Pakistani security forces were killed.

“We’ll do whatever is necessary to assure their safe passage,” he said.

Sri Lankans put on a brave face on losing the Twenty20 final to Pakistan last week.

“Losing to a friend is no pain,” commented one newspaper here.

It described Pakistan’s win as a prayer answered for a country struggling to repair her badly damaged image, and dubbed Pakistan “one of the few countries that helped Sri Lanka win her war on terror”.

Apart from the Galle test and three one-day matches in the central town of Dambulla, all the other matches will be played here in Colombo.