You’ve just lost a Test match, you’ve got a bad back and you’re a bit down in the dumps, so what comes next? A 3½hour coach journey from Kandy to Colombo on my favourite Sri Lankan roads. Readers of my last column may remember that I wasn’t too enamoured by the coach trip on the outward leg of this journey last week, so I was wondering what the effects of another long haul would be on my aching back.

Fortunately, there was plenty of room on our coach, so I was able to spend most of the journey lying on the floor with my eyes closed, which was surprisingly comfortable. Everyone else was sitting in the dark listening to their iPods, so it was a very quiet coach. And thankfully my back was no worse by the time we arrived in Colombo.

The plan is to see how it feels this morning after a night’s rest. There obviously isn’t a great deal of recovery time available before the second Test starts here in Colombo on Sunday, but I want to give myself every chance of playing. Just before I went to bed last night, it was still feeling stiff and if it hasn’t eased at all overnight, we’ll have to see what the medics think today. I’m hoping a good night’s kip will do the trick and last night I was given some muscle relaxants for my back. Happily, they have the side-effect of ensuring that you go out like a light and don’t wake up until morning.

My injury feels very similar to the problem I had in the second half of the summer, an inflammation of facet joints in my lower back. At the moment, I’m feeling the pain in my left side, not particularly convenient for bowling. I felt it in my spell just before tea on the fourth day and it just got worse and worse from there. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no doubt about the cause: it’s all Peter Moores’s fault, he seems to be a jinx for me. I never used to get injured until he took over as coach.

Needless to say, we were all pretty fed up in the dressing-room after yesterday’s defeat. When there are only 80 or so runs between the sides, it’s easy to think of so many things that could have gone our way but didn’t. Ian Bell and Matt Prior’s partnership was fantastic, but what we had really needed was a stand like that in the morning to set us up for the rest of the day. That didn’t happen, though, and with Sri Lanka bowling very well on a fifth-day pitch, we weren’t quite able to hold out for long enough.

Bell and Prior both fell to Muttiah Muralitharan, who was bowling with the second new ball. You don’t normally think of spinners being especially effective with a new ball, but then Murali isn’t your normal spinner. He seemed to get a different shape in the air, a bit more drift and then the ball skidded through a touch more on landing. On these hard, dry Sri Lankan outfields, there is a massive difference between the shiny, red new ball and an old ball that, by the time it is 80 overs old, usually looks as though it’s been chewed by a dog.

From a personal viewpoint, it was disappointing to be the last man out, yorked by Lasith Malinga when there were only ten overs or so left to play. I had faced Malinga briefly last summer, but he certainly takes some adjusting to. I often feel that I’m playing back to him when I should be going forward and, when he makes the ball tail in towards you, it feels as though he’s following you. If an inswinging yorker comes at you from that low trajectory, it’s difficult to keep out.

Anyway, that Test has gone and now, with two more to go, we have to do everything we can to get ourselves back into the series in Colombo. We were all glad to be back here at the Cinnamon Grand hotel, where the food is excellent. The same could not be said of our place in Kandy, unfortunately. One night we did not pay for the hotel buffet because all the food was cold (it wasn’t supposed to be cold, either).

As soon as we arrived here last night, I summoned room service and tucked into some soup and a sandwich. I’m hoping that meal will have restorative qualities for me and my injured back.