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| Can’t bat, can’t bowl... and can’t field too - THE VICTORS AND THE VANQUISHED |
Early last week while watching that unmerciful ball bashing at the hands of Virendra Sehwag and Yuvraj Singh with a cricket friend of mine we were rather intrigued by the gesture of the latter batsman when he reached his three figure mark.
After running across to the other end Yuvraj reached out to the Pavilion with his bat and dedicated that fabulous knock to his peer Sachin Tendulkar who had been at the wrong end of a barrage of wrong decisions mostly at the hands of local umpires. At the same instance he also mimicked playing a forward defence as if to act out the plight of Tendulkar and what happened to himself on an earlier occasion.
Simultaneously we both arrived at the notion that this was a mirror image of the cricketing woes of Sri Lanka in the present context. There is something radically wrong and that had to be fixed not with just paste, but some solid bonding concrete.
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| Another Lankan batsman walks back while the Indian cricketers celebrate. (Picture by Sanka Vidanagama) |
Even the local umpiring has not been as bad since Sri Lanka’s pioneering days in the big league. My friend just surmised saying “I wonder how many in our umpiring committee take their time off to watch as to who the good umpires are in the local circuit rather than just swallowing the contents of the captain’s reports and other allied stuff”.
While the match was going on we discussed many matters within the peripheries of the game of cricket.
Nevertheless a few days later Sri Lanka’s chief cricket selector Asantha de Mel who was also present at the match in an interview had mentioned that he had not seen anything amiss in local cricket other than some basic flaws like lackadaisical fielding and bad running between the wickets.
This prompted me to dial up my friend and recall some of the sights that we witnessed while watching the match last Tuesday.
My friend who also has donned the national flannels in the same manner that Mr. de Mel had sported them reiterated “First you must ascertain where and what has gone wrong. Sri Lanka is a side that has been hailed for their high standard of fielding for the past two decades or so. We were always aware of that fact and we have always maintained that aspect of the game. If we see that there is a huge drop in that discipline of the game that might have a ricocheting effect of some other problem. The same can be said about the running between the wickets too. Why does a team get sluggish in their running between the wickets? That happens when the batsmen run out of confidence and inevitably the three become twos and the twos become singles and the singles are not attempted if there is even an iota of a risk.”
Then he turned on to the main street. “Just see our batting line-up. At the top we have two players who have the reputation of going for the ball under any circumstances. Yes, we did the same and got away with it at one point of our cricketing history, but at that time we had that solid middle order that had Gurusinha, Aravinda, Arjuna, Mahanama and Tillekeratne to follow. This meant that the Sri Lanka team consisted of seven batsmen that had a very solid middle order. Right at this moment Sri Lanka has Sanath Jayasuriya, T.M. Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardena, Thilina Kandamby and Chamara Kapugedera. This means that we have only six top order batsmen as against the seven we had at that time. Then the nucleus of our batting were Arjuna and Aravinda. Just to pad them on top there was Asanka Gurusinha who was one of the best No3 batsmen in world at that time. Now what happens? Once we lose a wicket early, automatically Sangakkara and Jayawardena are exposed. As we all know Jayawardena is not at his best when it comes to batting confidence. So automatically when he gets on to the wicket he is under pressure from both ends. One is his own form and the other is the plight of his side if he gets out as those to follow are not time-tested batsmen. I watched the second game when Jayawardena and Kandamby put on hundred-run stand there were more than a hundred dot balls. This is a typical situation when side is short of confidence.”
To prove his argument he brought out another point “In contrast to Jayawardena the Indian captain M.S. Dhoni looks brimming with confidence and really he is that and just see in the three matches played so far he is yet to get out. The reason is that the top order is firing and they put very little pressure on him. At the same time I do not think that India has the greatest bowling line-up on earth. But they have now won eight matches in-a-row. This is because of the team rhythm.”
He took a breather and began to play his strokes again “When a captain is under pressure it tells on the whole outfit in the same manner. So what we could do is not go look out for scapegoats, but to walk towards the plausible solutions. I really feel that we do need a solid opener – a batsman in the mould of Thilan Samaraweera at the top of the order. Not so long ago India had Sourav Ganguly -- a middle order batsman in Tests batting at the top in ODIs. What we need is a batsman who could bat for forty overs and ease the pressure off the rest of the batting”.
Then he turned to the bowlers – “We have dropped Chaminda Vaas from the line-up, but I feel that he has a few more years to go. Maybe that Nuwan Kulasekera has come up the international rankings, but, I do not think he can get into Vass’ shoes as yet. Against a confident batting outfit like India, the Lankan medium pace attack looks even less than ordinary most of the time. At the same time I also wonder when things are going wrong in the middle if Mahela even gets a word of advice from the think tank in the dressing room. Unlike in the middle they see the larger picture and have access to the middle may be through a note of reminder. I say this because when Sehwag and Yuvraj were batting and treating Murali and Mendis harshly, Jayawardena could have easily switched on to Jayasuriya and Dilshan with a view to using his aces once the partnership was broken. But, in that inning Dilshan was never used, in spite of his breaking a growing partnership in the previous match. These are a few factors that have gone wrong, but I must say Sri Lanka still have the time to correct these shortcomings and come to their peak by the 2011 World Cup arrives.”
P.S: My two cents worth …. Yes, we were on par against Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, but, you can see the imbalance when we play India, isn’t it bad. Once again can anyone teach Mahela the toss winning mantra? |
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