The Russian high jump contingent was already in training for the games. It was only when Andrey jumped a new personal best of 2.38, at the London Grand Prix on 25-7-2008, the authorities saw him as a suitable candidate and dropped one from the original squad and included him instead.

Then to every ones surprise, Andrey was selected at the last minute to join the Russian team at the 2008 Olympics, where he won the gold medal with a jump of 2.36. That day no one else had such a perfect record until the end. Not even once did Andrey floor the cross bar on 19th of August at the Bird’s Nest Stadium, Beijing in the men’s high jump final.

Can we take a cue from this? Certainly here in this country, yes, we can.

From the time that Malinda Warnapura played for St. Peter’s and shone as a talented allrounder he had been nudging the selectors on merit. So much so, he was put into the lower grades in the top rung and there too he lived up to his potential. As a result, some of those who matter about the team selections wanted to give it a try. Initially there was resistance. The reason given, Malinda had flaws in his batting technique.

Better late than never, he was afforded the opportunity. Besides getting a ‘golden duck’ in his debut innings, Malinda has now developed into a dependable opener who has a 58.72 average after eleven innings.

When one sees him batting in the Test arena and watch him punishing every ball that has to kiss the boundary line you are bound to think as to what he is doing outside the ODI line up. Yet again, we hear that there is resistance up there within the hierarchy about Warnapura’s inclusion in the ODI line-up.

At the same time one must not forget opener Mahela Udawatte, who the ‘A’ coach Chandika Haturusinghe has identified as a batsman who has good ‘eye-ball co-ordination’. In his last two ODI innings, Udawatte has two impressive scores of 73 and 67.

The other day while having a chat with a selection insider he pointed out, that right now, Sri Lanka national team is batting on a very uncertain wicket. Don’t we feel the weight? Don’t we feel that we are too top heavy with a very thin middle? He was pondering about the wisdom of opening batting with Kumar Sangakkara. Since, he began to open batting in the West Indies he has scores of 23,28 and 1 (in the West Indies) 101,0,112 and 121 of which two were against Bangladesh and one against Pakistan during the Asia Cup. But, since then his contributions at the top has been 7,4,19 and 2 – all against India.

His grouse was that at present Sri Lanka is wasting the incomparable talent of Sangakkara by opening the innings with him.

The second point was that Sri Lanka was putting all their eggs in one basket. The core of Sri Lanka ODI batting, Jayasuriya, Sangakkara and Jayawardena comes in at number one two and three, if they do depart early the domino theory is put into effect.It is true, that all good batsmen like to take the crease when the power play is on. During that period a good batsman with talent and experience could exploit the situation to the maximum. However, Sri Lanka’s irony is that Nos. 4, 5 and 6 cannot be relied upon. All three batsmen are fine stroke players, but certainly are not equipped to play the anchor role.

Then certainly, the status quo must change. About a decade ago to back Aravinda de Silva’s stroke play Sri Lanka had the likes of Arjuna Ranatunga, Hashan Tillekeratne – batsmen who could stick there and carry the tail along till they see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Now in the whole arsenal there are two solutions according to him. One is to drop a middle order batsman and bring an inform stubborn horse like Thilan Samaraweera who could come in and stick around until sanity prevails.

The other he sees in bringing Prasanna Jayawardena. He will come up with two solutions. He certainly will take over the wicket-keeping burden off Sangakkara and take him off a lot of misery. At the same time as a batsman Jayawardena has improved vastly, but, one cannot put him in the same pedestal as Samaraweera.

The solutions to these problems have to be found. As an ODI playing nation Sri Lanka has faced many reversals in the recent past besides winning the Asia cup and becoming the runners-up of the last World Cup. Hot at hand are three one dayers followed by the Champions Trophy either in Pakistan or on our own soil.

Now arguably Sri Lanka has the best bowling options in the whole world especially after the advent of Ajantha Mendis. But, please sit back and think twice -- are we doing justice to our bowlers by batting like this?