Chamari Atapattu scored 113 runs in 66 balls against World top-dog Women’s Cricket team Australia ay Sydney today — albeit in a losing cause because Australia had piled on 217 for 4 wkts in their twenty overs in the First ODI match up during the Sri Lankan Women’s tour. I was fortunate to catch most of her innings because I turned on the TV with the intention of watching Australia play Wales in the World Cup Rugby tournament. I can assure readers that Chamari’s striking was clean and scintillating. Several of her sixers or fours were straight hits.
Chamari Athapathtu … at North Sydney Oval on September 29, 2019 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Jason McCawley/Getty Images)
Rex Clementine,in Sunday Island, 31 March 2019, where the title runs “Marvan on ‘Mankading’ Buttler in 2014”
There are certain places visiting teams would hate play overseas. As for Sri Lankans, they avoid Wanderes in Johannesburg like the plague as it always seams around there. So is Edgbaston in Birmingham where the seam bowlers come into the equation all the time. Sri Lanka have played at Edgbaston on five times but won only once. That win came in 2014 in a bitterly contested ODI. These days teams tend to make most of the scheduling and invariably the hosts would want to play the final game of a series at a venue that favours them, just in case if that happens to be a decider. So was the case in 2014. The five match ODI series was squared 2-2. Sri Lanka won a low scoring thriller with Lahiru Thirimanne and Mahela Jayawardene posting half-centuries to wrap up the series 3-2. Rather than celebrating a famous series win, the cricketing world was busy discussing the ‘Mankading’ of Josh Buttler. Some ex-England players found fault with the Sri Lankans.
Sachithra Senanayake gestures to the umpire after ‘mankading’ Jos Buttler.
PREAMBLE:On the 21/22nd March I organised my thoughts on Sri Lanka’s potential ODI squad for the World Cup in England. This was a premature move – before the final two T20 matches in South Africa and without inside information of what had transpired behind the scenes in New Zealand and Australia in ways that led the new selection Committee headed by Ashantha de Mal to insert some radical changes in the squad for South Africa.
I sent some queries to cricketing friends as soon as this draft was completed; while also posting it confidentially to some of them. Since then a searching interview with Ashantha De Mel by Champika Fernando in the Daily Mirror has provided some crucial information on the events that led them to recall Chandimal. More vitally, it has provided illuminating insights into the new Selection Committee’s thinking. His comments should serve as a testing yardstick for my reflections below so that we can then move further forward in the light of the second and third T20matches against the Safs.
Marvan Atapattu has contended that “Sri Lankan Cricket has been in a rut for the past two years” and that whereas “there have been bad times, …. we always could see a light at the end of the tunnel. But the way things are being handled and what I see now, there’s nothing like that.” [1]
Balanced thoughts? Up to a point. The fact remains that the Sri Lanka cricket administration has been a roller-coaster from 1996 to 2018; and some of the squads secured pretty good results despite this background situation – no more so than 2016 when they bested the Australians three-zip — admittedly in home terrain.
News Item in Times Now Digital, 4 February 2019, “Former captain Marvan Atapattu doesn’t see ‘any light at the end of tunnel’ for Sri Lankan cricket”
Sri Lankan Cricket has been in a rut for the past two years. Series after series, Sri Lanka have found themselves on the losing side. Even the lowly Zimbabwe have managed to trump the once-mighty Islanders. Their recent performance hasn’t been much to talk about as they suffered a two-Test defeat in Australia which follows a 1-0 loss to New Zealand in a two-Test series and defeats in all four limited-overs matches on that tour.
Dinesh Weerawansa, in Sunday Observer, April 2016, where the title is “Lankan team only lacks experience – Former Observer Schoolboy Cricketer Kumar Dharmasena”
Observer Schoolboy Cricketer turned ICC elite panel international umpire Kumar Dharmasena does not see any crisis situation in the Sri Lanka national team. In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Observer during his short visit to Colombo for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, Dharmasena said he does not see any crisis or an alarming situation in the Sri Lanka team. The former Sri Lanka all-rounder who was a member of the 1996 World Cup-winning team, attributed the recent dismal performance of the national team due to lack of experience and international exposure and expressed confidence that the team would be able to bounce back in near future.
Bharat Sundaresan, inThe Indian Express, 19 August 2015, where the title reads: “Tharindu Kaushal: Breaking walls, building walls”
In December 2014, Tharindu Kaushal left from his 100-year-old ancestral home to make his Test debut in New Zealand. When he returned from tour a month later, there was nothing left of it. The young off-spinner had no home to come back to. There was only rubble.The disintegration of the already-dilapidated house started with the roof caving in one night. Kaushal’s parents, father PH Dhanapala and mother Deepti Hemalatha were asleep inside the house at the time, but they escaped without any injury.
Next morning, they had no choice but to shift their stuff, along with Kaushal’s, away. Luckily Dhanapala’s sister, Induvati, lived just 100 yards away—at Rathgama’s highest point—in a slightly more opulent house. In a day or two, Dhanapala’s home had completely crumbled. When Kaushal heard the news, he was understandably upset, but not too surprised.
Tharindu Kaushal’s parents, father Dhanapala and mother Deepti Hemalatha (centre), pose with their son’s gift to them, a rickshaw.
“Tharindu had asked us to move to my sister’s house before he left. I wanted to fix the house but never had the money,” says Dhanapala, dressed in a purple shirt and trousers. So the first thing the 22-year-old, who spun India to a massive defeat in Galle, did upon his return was buy a tiny plot in the neighbouring town of Seenigama — which was badly affected by the tsunami — and start building a house for his parents, both 50 now. For now, even Kaushal still sleeps in the aunt’s house when in town. Continue reading →
Michael Roberts, 16 June 2015… an essay drafted on 16th June 2015 before the final XI was selected, but also failing to note that Tharanga was not in the reckoning. The article was sent to islandcricket.lk and The Island for publication, and also presented to Michael de Zoysa and Andrew Fernando with an express request for “critical comments.” De Zoysa’s immediate dissent is incorporated here as a COMMENT at the end with a response.
The retirement of Jayawardene and Dilshan from Test cricket and the impending departure of Sangakkara render the future of Sri Lanka’s cricket team as worrying as intriguing. In chatting with Michael de Zoysa in Colombo early in June we touched on future possibilities and just yesterday a long Skype-chat with Andrew Fidel Fernando in Colombo was extremely enlightening. His prospective Eleven for the Pakistan series worked within the limits of the XV chosen for the series by the SLC Selection Committee.
Sri Lanka cricket team captain Angelo Mathews (R) and team coach Marvan Atapattu chat during a practice session at the Galle International Cricket Stadium in Galle on June 15, 2015. Sri Lanka and Pakistan will play three Tests, five One-Day Internationals and two T20 Series in Sri Lanka between June 17 to August 1. The first Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka will be played on June 17 at the Galle International Cricket Stadium in Galle. AFP PHOTO/ Ishara S. KODIKARA (Photo credit should read Ishara S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images)
However, I intervene first with my choice of XI, guided in part by Fernando — but adding my own twist. The twist arises from the fact that the match is being played at Galle.[1] This background links up with my reasoning that bowlers win matches and that one must enter a match with one’s three or four best bowlers. With Eranga out of contention because of injury and Lakmal in question and without match practice, I hold that our best three bowlers for the sort of conditions that are likely to prevail at Galle are Rangana Herath followed by Dilruwan Perera and Tharinda Kaushal at level pegging. Continue reading →
The previous administrations of SL cricket revealed considerable acumen in arranging a tour of New Zealand prior to the World Cup 2015. This meant that most of the Sri Lankan players were acclimatized to the conditions governing the Antipodes. There was a down side to this however. Coming on top of arduous ODI series in India and Sri Lanka, the physical demands on the regular players were considerable – so that one can inquire whether a few of the injuries suffered in the Antipodes were a product of overstrain (a thought that is difficult to answer).
Players, coaches and supporting staff cannot think, talk and sleep cricket all the time. They cannot be expected to live in each other’s pocket 24/7 … or even 15/7. Leisure and relaxation tailored to each man’s suite of desires are essential. Familial and female companionship are requisites for those with partners and/or children.
During the course of the World Cup 2015 watchers were occasionally served up statistical tables of leading run-scores in the history of World Cup or ODI cricket. Sri Lankan fans would have been especially attentive to those featuring Sangakkara’s stellar career and record breaking levels. On one such occasion I was intrigued to see Russel Arnold’s statistics appear at the tail-end of an august list of names.
Primed by Arnold’s appearance as a TV commentator and his impeccable performance in this role, I proceeded to do some research on the topic and began with a statistical picture of a comparative kind that is quite revelatory. This picture raises issues about media-hype and our very own memory banks. Continue reading →
Dharmasena’s Reflections on Cricket Past and Present
Dinesh Weerawansa, in Sunday Observer, April 2016, where the title is “Lankan team only lacks experience – Former Observer Schoolboy Cricketer Kumar Dharmasena”
Observer Schoolboy Cricketer turned ICC elite panel international umpire Kumar Dharmasena does not see any crisis situation in the Sri Lanka national team. In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Observer during his short visit to Colombo for the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, Dharmasena said he does not see any crisis or an alarming situation in the Sri Lanka team. The former Sri Lanka all-rounder who was a member of the 1996 World Cup-winning team, attributed the recent dismal performance of the national team due to lack of experience and international exposure and expressed confidence that the team would be able to bounce back in near future.
Continue reading →
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