Sports
|
||||
| After
Murali where do we go? -Sahabandu "After Murali whom have we got - where do we go?" lamented the one time ace spinner of the All Ceylon side of the late sixties and early seventies. "The modern day spinner does not flight the ball, he bowls far too flat, and he bowls a restrictive line instead of trying to buy his wickets. As a result we are producing sub-standard spinners. For a country that once boasted of spinners like Anuruddha Polonowita, Ajith de Silva, D.S. de Silva, Lalith Kaluperuma, Dan Piachaud, Fitzroy Crozier, Neil Chanmugam, Abu Fuard, Cyril Ernest, Lareef Idroos, V. Mahendran (who played for Tamil Union) to name a few, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel here". complained Sahabandu. Continuing on why spinners are suffering today, Sahabandu said that " The cradle of cricket" which is school cricket is deplorable. "When we played the grounds were full, and now except for "Big Matches" we do not see the same type of interest. For instance, in the "Big Matches" that I played in, we had seven players from that era that played for "All Ceylon later on. That was the standard of school cricket." "Another factor that does not help in the grooming of good spinners is the fact that there are too many wickets that help the spinners in Sri Lanka, especially the club matches. When a club wants to win a match they prepare the wickets to win the match. They should prepare wickets that will make the spinners work hard for their wickets. Make them sweat for it. A bowler should learn the art of spinning. Flighting the ball to buy wickets is an essential part of spinning. On a dusty wicket for instance you need to flight the ball more. On a rain affected wicket you bowl a bit flatter and faster. Bishen Singh Bedi and Derek Underwood were masters at this. On a hard wicket your stock ball is different. On different types of wickets your stock ball should be different. Any other ball should be a variation. You should realize what trajectory to bowl. Also a spinner should have confidence to flight the ball. The coaches should train their spinners in the nets, and make them do their home- work in the nets. We didn't have private coaching when we were in school yet just see the number of quality spinners that we produced. The game has changed a lot from the days that we played. Now it is so professional. Now we have a lot of good batsmen and good pace bowlers, but there are no good spinners. I think school cricket standard has declined." Added Sahabandu. "Employed now at the S- Lon division of A.F.Jones (Maharaja Group), Sahabandu first came to the limelight when he played for his alma mater, Royal College from 1958-60. My coaches at school were Vincent de Bruin and Mr E.C. Gunasekera. But my greatest mentors and those who helped me were Stanley Jayasinghe and D.H. De Silva. Coming from a cricketing family where his uncle captained Royal in 1919, and won the "Big Match" by an innings in a day, and another Uncle captained Wesley in 1929/30 Daya played club cricket for a record 20 years, in fact 19 and a half seasons, where he played 253 matches, bowled 6552.1 overs with 1919 maidens, conceding 14,787 runs, capturing 1048 wickets at an average of 14.11, in Division 1 P.Sara Trophy cricket. In 1968/69, which he considers as his best season, he took 79 wickets breaking Darrel Lieversz' record of 1962/63 when he captured 72 wickets. At that time in the Asian scene, only Bishen Singh Bedi (India) and Intikhab Alam (Pakistan) had taken 1000 wickets in their career, and that too having played for English counties. He played as an opening bowler and then started bowling spin in 1968 when it was Stanley Jayasinghe who encouraged him to bowl spin. I played my first representative game in 1968 when I played against an Indian side led by Hanumant Singh. " I joined Nomads in 1963 and played 18 years for them, having earlier played for one season for Sebastianites. I played under D.H. De Silva who captained Nomads for about 15 years, when Nomads was one of the elite clubs, mainly due to D.H. De Silva, our captain. We were later skippered by Anuruddha Polonowita, Sarath Seneviratne and Russel Hamer." "One of my memorable moments was when Neil Chanmugam and I playing for Colombo South against the Rest put on 65 runs for the last wicket and I was on nought just defending my wicket. This was, however, not Sahabandu's greatest effort with the bat. He scored 32 in a match against India at the Lal Bahadur Stadium, Hyderabad in December 1975, coming in as nightwatchman facing Bedi, Prasanna and Chandrasekar." |
||||
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
