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Sports

Learning how to do it their way
By S.R. Pathiravithana
At the turn of the Christian year of 2006 if some one whacky said that Sri Lanka would come into the VB final in Australia by overpowering either Australia or South Africa or at the same time said that India is going face a losing streak I certainly would have a few nice words to say of what I really thought of him.

Alas! A month hence the Sri Lankans have really made it to the final in the VB series and has even taken the first leg of the three match final. ( In fact the Australian commentators were only talking about the first two matches prior to Friday) while India is limping in Pakistan after losing a Test series in Pakistan after nearly two decades and also have failed to defend a total in excess of 300 runs in the ODI opener and are on a losing streak.

This is a very stubborn fact that is established in the world of cricket. Ironically people are afraid to speak of it. It is called the home advantage.
I was a witness when an angry Indian captain-- Kapil Dev professed that Sri Lanka will never win a match outside their own shores. Well that was nearly a quarter century ago and since then Sri Lanka has posted the highest total ever in Test cricket against their giant neighbours and beaten them more than once in the same game. However another fact remains. That is, Sri Lanka is yet to beat them on their own soil.

At the same time they even say the English team has come of age and they now have found the correct rhythm in the team with the likes of Flintoff and Pieterson joining hands with Vaughan,Trescothick, Harmison and Jones. Last year this team overpowered the King-Kongs of the arena – Australia in a home series at home and brought home the coveted ‘ashes’ after eighteen years. The red and white flag fluttered and Andrew Flintoff became a bigger celebrity than David Beckham in soccer-- crazy England. However in their next visit to the green top, this time in Pakistan, they were outplayed wholesale in both forms of the game and went back home tottering with a spate of injuries and are still planning how to subdue the wrath of the Indians while taking them on in their own backyard in their next outing.

Sri Lanka in their turn in the pre-India tour quarter also beat their vanquishers to take the India Oil Cup in sure style while also walloping a problem-riddled West Indian composition and the new kids on the block – Bangladesh. Then they sailed across to India in high spirits, but fell flat on their face at 6-1 in the ODI series and also lost the test series a month later.

The above goes to prove that even in this age of high technology, where they could find out how to get a batsman out with the aid of computer analysis rather than at a team meeting, the pundits have not been able to overcome the problem that teams face when they play overseas. At present none of the high performance teams would give away a series while playing at home barring Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and to a certain extent the West Indies.

The only team that could pull off a certain series win on foreign soil is the highly professional outfit of the Australian composition who are well drilled in all aspects of the game, especially the psychological aspect of it. Give them an inch they take a mile once they do it they swoop into the merciless kill. This is the very ingredient that has earned them the accolade of being the ‘World Champions’. In the same breath then, we have experienced even the Australian huff and puff and some times even succumbed to the pressures when they play in the subcontinent. However they try their best, psychologically, to overpower their opponents even while playing in the subcontinent and most of the time they do succeed.

Coming back to the last quarter of Sri Lanka cricket we can see it was more an orchestrated downfall from behind the curtain players where the actors in the open fell prey. In the first ODI India batting first scored over 300 runs and in return Sri Lanka were blazing away at full throttle with Jayasuriya and Sangakkara matching stroke for stroke. So much so that at that point there was a Indian who held a poster shouting the Sri Lankan meter is changing faster than a Bombay taxi meter. Both incumbent batsmen departed and what followed was a tragedy. Then things went from bad to worse. That is something that every country faces while playing in India more often than not. As a remedy what did our brilliant puppeteers do? They made the inexplicable decision to change the vice-captain, appointing Chaminda Vaas in place of Mahela Jayawardena. May be this appointment should have been made some years earlier, but, certainly that was not the most opportune time to come to that decision.

Just take this scenario. Jayawardena was the man who was there as second in command. At the same time another name that was being bandied around was the name of Kumar Sangakkara. When you make an appointment of this nature – that is naming a man who is at the tail end of his career as vice captain, there are many reverberations. The ones who are waiting to get into the senior shoes get the message that their appointments too will get delayed at least by another three years and by that time they too would be touching the thirties age-wise. They also must have felt once they really get into the shoes of their seniors they will get only a limited version of it and not a role that they too could build a side to lead from the front. At the same time just look at Vaas’ plight. Does he have any chances of leading the side as official captain? It’s too late in the day.

Then the other folly of the selectors was the handling of the Jayasuriya saga. These two blunders nearly cost Lankan cricket dearly. It came to a position that they had almost lost their bearings.

The whole nation is now pleasantly happy the way the team inched their way back into contention in spite of a whole load of shortcomings. The most glaring are the handling of the Bandara-Kapugedera issue and the Arnold-Mubarak issue. Naming Bandara as super-sub and even not bowling him in one-match is blasphemy in cricketing parlance. Surely Kapugedera has more talent than Mubarak and sending him at number four very well knowing that he lacks the skill to rotate the strike is just plain rubbish. Arnold is no number seven batsman and he proved it himself to the tour selectors. So they might as well look elsewhere. As far as Kapugedera is concerned any one who knows more than just the basics of cricket would have one look at Kapugedera and say that he has it in him. He proved this to the world and his tour selectors with his explosive knock on Friday.

It is good that Atapattu has gone back to his den at the top. But, the only unaccountable fact is that Mahela Jayawardena still just cannot bring out his potential. In the past at one point or the other both Aravinda de Silva and Arjuna Ranatunge curbed some of their strokes and strengthened some others just to bring stability in their careers. But one cannot explain as to why Jayawardena keeps on inventing more and more strokes to his already huge repertoire. However he is just not bringing in that extra little bit into the Sri Lankan middle order.

In summing up it’s good to see the Lankan cricketers shedding their differences and playing with the big guns in cricket on their own terms and often winning and winning overseas. That is the most important result of it all.
“As one Australian pundit blurted out on Friday – “These cricketers from that tiny island is one of the hardest oppositions. When they get themselves and are at it, they swarm all over you”.

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