If I tell you that there are a lot of sweaty palms in the England squad at the moment, it doesn’t mean that we’re excessively nervous going into the Test series against Sri Lanka later this week. It is just that, when you’re playing cricket in the sort of heat and humidity we’re experiencing at the moment, it’s almost impossible to keep your hands dry. And that can be a bit of a problem when you’re trying to get the ball to reverse swing, as you hope to do on the flat pitches out here.

The tour is going pretty well so far, but this difficulty with reverse swing has been something of a bugbear. When you’re attempting to get the ball in the right condition to reverse swing, one side needs to be kept as dry as possible. That can be tricky if all your fielders’ palms are constantly sweaty.

As you’re no doubt aware, once the ball has reached the wicketkeeper, it is usually returned to the bowler through several pairs of hands while the bowler walks back to his mark. Our fielders are keeping their hands as dry as they can, of course, but during our present game in Colombo, we’ve been throwing the ball from first slip straight back to mid-off. It’s not a perfect solution, but passing the ball through fewer pairs of hands has to be worth a try, at least until the laws are changed to allow us to wear gloves in the field.

This is just one example of the challenges we’re facing in the early stages of this tour in coming to terms with the heat and humidity of Sri Lanka. There’s a nice breeze blowing across the Nondescripts ground that we’re playing on at the moment, which is very welcome, but my clothes are still wringing wet by the time I’ve finished my first over. When I walk back to my mark and try to catch my breath, I’m taking in great big mouthfuls of hot, heavy air rather than the cool stuff that I really want.

At the end of a hard practice session the other day, Stuart Broad took one look at his sopping training clothes and said: “I couldn’t be any wetter if I’d stood under a shower.” You get used to these things, though, and after more than a week here, we’re becoming fairly well acclimatised.

One other problem to bear in mind is the danger of dehydration. It has been drummed into us that we mustn’t wait until we’re thirsty to have a drink, because by then it is too late and your body is already dehydrating.

Like most fast bowlers, I try to take liquid on board in between overs while I’m fielding on the boundary. Water is no good to me as I’m hyponatraemic, which means I have a low concentration of sodium in my blood. It’s nothing serious – I used to get cramps quite a lot when I was younger - but it’s better for me to take in electrolytes to maintain my sodium balance, so rather than water I drink Dioralyte, which is full of rehydration salts. I often get through half a litre of the stuff in one over.

Several of my teammates also drink Dioralyte when they’ve been sweating out in the field. In fact, I’m surprised the ECB haven’t taken out shares in Dioralyte: for this six-week tour, we’ve brought 300 boxes of the stuff at £10 a go, so that’s £3,000 that has to be spent just on sodium drinks. And yes, it is normally used by diarrhoea sufferers, so you can insert your own joke here about stopping the flow of runs.

As ever on pitches in the sub-continental, I’ve been taking my wickets on tour in ways that are normally embarrassing for a fast bowler: caught at mid-on, caught at mid-wicket. Not too many batsmen hurried into splicing to gully on these slow, low pitches. I’ve also had Matt Prior, the wicketkeeper, standing up to the stumps while I’ve been bowling spells of slower cutters, which is something I’m not used to when I’m bowling in England.

We’re all hoping that Stephen Harmison has not injured his back too badly after he pulled up yesterday. He thought it was only a spasm and, when you’ve been bowling for as long as Harmy or me, you usually know whether you’ve done any serious damage or not. I had a niggling back injury towards the end of last season and you can never be too careful when you feel a twinge.

All being well, a good night’s sleep will have done the trick. Thankfully, our hotel in Colombo, the Cinnamon Grand, is one of the best I’ve ever stayed in and, importantly, the beds are extremely comfortable. Just what you need after a hard day’s sweating in the field.

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