I met Geoffrey Boycott the other day and talking about the proliferation of Twenty20 and one-day cricket to the detriment of Test cricket, the famous son of Yorkshire was of the view that “too much off a good thing is not good for you”.

Chief selector Sanath Jayasuriya with senior Lankan members. - File pic

Boycott who was on his way to Australia for the Ashes, said: “My favourite dinner when my mum was alive was steak and kidney pie. But if she gave it to me every night, by Friday I would be fit to throw it at her. More is definitely not better.”But this is what Sri Lanka cricket has been gorging itself on these past year or more – a surfeit of one-day cricket which like Boycott’s steak and kidney pie is now starting to look and smell stale.

Before the Kiwis set foot in Sri Lanka Sanath Jayasuriya was quick to shoot his mouth off and criticised New Zealand for sending a below-par squad for the on-going limited-overs and Twenty20 series.

Well let’s hope yesterday’s third and final one-dayer ended in a win for Sri Lanka or otherwise our erstwhile master-blaster will have to spend some time wiping all that egg off his face.

I’m writing this column soon after the second rain-interrupted game in Hambantota, with early deadlines preventing me from waiting until the final result is known on Saturday.

But even if Sri Lanka wins and manages to draw the series, it is a huge embarrassment at not being able to back up your big talk with an emphatic series victory, and instead end up like red-faced muppets.

This must serve as a good lesson for those people who run the show – never underrate anyone, least of all your opponent.
It is surprising that Jayasuriya, of all people, should have been so quick to under-estimate and ridicule a New Zealand squad missing captain Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor and Tim Southee for another meaningless episode of limited-overs cricket.
As a player, Jayasuriya at his best was peerless. I’m sure he would never have taken any opposing bowler for granted. No cricketer worth his salt would do so. Yes, Jayasuriya would have dominated attacks with impunity but he would never have rubbished them verbally the way he did our visitors for turning up without their key trio.

By going on record and saying he was “disappointed” that Sri Lanka would not be facing full-strength opposition was not only churlish but it also served like waving a red flag before a bull, inflaming the opposition.

Perhaps Jayasuriya should have taken a leaf from the book of his Kiwi counterparts who felt McCullum, Taylor and Southee would be better off staying behind in New Zealand preparing for the home Test series against the West Indies which starts next month.The chief of New Zealand Cricket’s selection panel, Bruce Edgar had stated: “Ross and Brendon need red ball preparation to be at their best for the summer. Both players are vital to our success and fine tuning their red ball skills before the West Indies series starting in early December is paramount.”

Our selectors and administrators should take a lesson from this. Everyone else it seems places a premium on Test cricket, other than our good souls at Maitland Place who seem unable to step off the treadmill of one-day cricket.

And it is made worse when the results on the field make you gag. While you cannot control the weather, the loss of the second one-dayer cannot be blamed on the caprices of nature.

After having posted 138 for one before the rains intervened, and then seeing the target balloon to 198 in 23 overs, thanks to Duckworth and Lewis, Sri Lanka should have had the match in the bag.

Yes, the ball might have been wet and hard to grip but a tried and tested bowling unit like Lasith Malinga, Nuwan Kulasekera, Rangana Herath and Sachitra Senanayake should have done better.

Skipper Angelo Mathews blamed his bowlers. Hopefully he included himself too. But his biggest mistake was that he failed to take the responsibility on his shoulders when it mattered most – bowling the last over himself.

Instead it was up to Herath and the left-arm spinner finding it difficult to grip the ball was swatted all over the park to concede the required 20 runs.

As a cricketer, you can’t find fault with the talent of Mathews. But his leadership is still questionable and this is where matches that go down to the wire are won or lost.

Win some, lose some. It is just another match on a long and unending list of one-dayers, all seemingly being used to find the right formula before the 2015 World Cup comes along.

If this is the case, it is unfathomable why the selectors keep dropping Thisara Perera who by far is easily the biggest game-changer we have now.

Perera can win matches with bat or ball. He has proven this on many occasions and yet we continue to ignore him in a misplaced attempt to find the right balance in the team.

The burly all-rounder must be pencilled in first and the rest of the squad picked around him. He is the future and anyone who cannot see that is surely blinkered.

So on all counts, it seems Sri Lanka have lost in this series with New Zealand. While the latter look at the bigger picture and save their best to prepare for the ‘real’ stuff, we not only denigrate our visitors, but also fail to give our next generation of players a chance to shine.

While everyone agrees that we need Mahela, Sanga and Dilshan, should we continue to play all of them, all the time? A rotational policy must be implemented among the seniors especially for these bilateral series which are of limited consequence. In this way we will give our younger players more opportunities.

Before the series began, Jayasuriya was quoted in this paper as saying: “If the series peters out to be a one-sided affair, the loser is going to be the game of cricket.” That’s hardly been the case. The true loser is Sri Lanka cricket.