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The World Cup of 2011 is now history. It is done and dusted. A new World Champion in the form and shape of India has been found and crowned. The previous Champion Australia and the other teams have been made to lick their wounds and reflect on their mistakes with the intention of making a stronger bid for the 2015 world cup in Australia! But what about our own and beloved Sri Lanka? Do we possibly believe that there will be another opportunity as good as the one we just missed for considerable no of years?
This only time will tell. Hope we will not have to wait for another twenty eight long years as India did! My personal opinion is, “this could be termed as one of the best chances” we had which slipped through! It had everything in our favour going in to the world cup! An easier draw, home advantage and a settled team. What more can be asked for? But alas it wasn’t to be with India beating us convincingly in the final.Whilst most people may feel that the runner up tag is a respectable enough achievement, there is an equal or a large number of people who think otherwise. Yes in 2007 against a very strong Aussie side, the Lankans who weren’t as good as the 2011 outfit could comfort themselves with the runner up tag! But definitely not this year.
Whilst there are many rumors doing its rounds of various possibilities and reason for the loss, one cannot discount some of the pertinent questions which come out of the game. Let us also not forget that the average cricket fan of Sri Lanka is knowledgeable and can not be easily fooled. Hence, whatever the reasons given for the make up of the playing team in the final, I am sure it is not going to be accepted easily and will need a great deal of convincing!
One will not find a winning combination being changed as much as we did in the final. I don’t assume that a school U 13 team would make such massive changes! True there was one enforced change of a player who maintains the balance in the form of Mathews. In that scenario may be two changes would have been ideal to look at covering the batting and bowling angle. How could one justify the selection of a player who wasn’t in the final squad and a player who didn’t have a game after the first match? Don’t get me wrong about Randiv. I am a firm believer that Randiv should have been a first choice player in the fifteen man squad and was unfairly left out. But trying to do justice by playing him in the final when both Herath and Mendis had bowled superbly wasn’t the right choice.
And as for Mendis it has been very hard by him to be left out after doing the hard yards in the games against England and New Zealand. If the dropping of Mendis could be ridiculous then the excuse for doing so which is “the Indians finding out the mystery of his bowling” can only be a joke! Here is a bowler who put his hand up during the power plays and contained the best of batsmen and after a decent run with the ball being overlooked for the final! No not acceptable at all. On the same breath do we drop a batsman who has had a poor run against a particular country? Instead we would bring him back with confidence. For Mendis it was the ideal situation considering the level of self-assurance and success he had in the tournament to regain the dominance he once had against the Indian batsmen.
And on the topic of being over looked, I am now a firm believer that the veteran Jayasuriya should have made a huge difference to the Sri Lankan line up. Whilst he was never going to make my eleven as an opener I would have surely considered him to bat in the lower middle order and bowl ten overs of containing left arm spin. Besides he can unquestionably challenge Dilshan to the quickest mover on the field even at the age of forty one. Jayasuriya as an allrounder could have surely given the Lankan outfit more options and may well have balanced the team when Mathews was injured! It was a shame that Jayasuriya was over looked when he could have contributed and the so called selection woes may well have been sorted had the Lankans possessed him as an option.
It is not too late to give the great man of Sri Lanka cricket a graceful exit! As we should honour such personalities in the manner they deserve! Remember the send off Arjuna Ranatunga got? Jayasuriya deserves a similar or better one too! I am convinced about it!As for the game and when Sri Lanka fielded did we all see a bewildered Sangakkara behind the stumps? I am sure we did. I also thought that Sangakkara for some reason lost the plot and failed to recognize some obvious openings! The first and the most obvious one was when Tendulkar was dismissed by Malinga pushing India deeper in to the mud, why was a life line given to Gambhir and Kholi? Surely weren’t Gambhir under tremendous stress and Kholi too looking uncomfortable? A quick wicket would have exposed the Indians further and then when Dhoni came in at 114/3, once again the Indian skipper and his partner batted with a great amount of easiness with hardly any pressure! The Lankans at that stage needed two quick wickets to have a look at the Indian lower order! And a bit more aggression in the form of Malinga with pressure applied could have tilted it. Worth a try for sure! Maybe India would have still survived. But it was worth an attempt as the World Cup was at stake! It is better to have loved and lost than not loved at all! How true.
Another factor which had to be addressed was the dew! Didn’t the Sri Lankan team and the management understand that the dew was expected? And by the time the Sri Lankan bowlers were half way through the ball appeared to be wet and greasy and made it hard for the bowlers to grip! Besides the dominating of the bowling by the Indian batsmen the most telling issue was the running between the wickets. Whilst the Sri Lankans were slow to get off the mark the Indians were dropping the ball at their feet and were off in a flash. This resulted in the constant changing of the strike and also managing the score board pressure!
So the world cup is over! There have been many resignations with it. The most significant being the Captains decision to quit. It could amount to an ending of an era. Let us hope the new beginning will be better!
Roshan Abeysinghe is a leading
cricket promoter and an international cricket commentator |
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