Sri Lanka It's Happening

September 13, 2005

Bloggers are falling over each other to get their two cents in on the Australian ashes debacle. I will refrain. My 2c contribution is on Sri Lanka cricket.

Sri Lankan have always been better at one day cricket than test cricket. Currently we occupy the #2 slot in the ranking table. And the gap between australia and Sri Lanka is narrowing. That means at least on the surface things are improving. But are they really?

A few short months ago Sri Lanka had a convincing victory in the Asian cricket championship. That was followed soon after by another convincing victory in the Idian oil trangular. But then are they really all that convincing? Consider this, of the four teams that took part in the Asian Cup one of Bangladesh and the other was India. The star studded Indian outfit is a notorious one day team.

In that light the Indian Oil cup was even less convincing, One team was the West Indians the other was India. We have just won a series 3-0 against bangladesh. Looking at the way the team went about the task, it seems woefully obvious that Sri Lanka would have lost 3-0 against a stronger team like Australia, England or New Zealand.

The trouble with Sri Lanka Cricket is that we have only three world class players, Kumar, Murali and Vass. On a day that one of them doesn't click Sri Lanka performs terribly.

Take the test match that is being played now. Bangladesh was dismissed for just 188. Chaminda Vass wasn't his usual self and didn't take a wicket at the start of the innings. Bangladesh was 155/2 at one stage. Any other team might have scored 488.

While batting, Kumar scracthed around for 30 runs and Sri Lanka ended the day at 160/3 any other side might have had a couple of other wickets and the team might have been struggling at 160/5 instead of being just 3 down.

Posted by raditha at September 13, 2005 1:55 AM