Courtesy: Getty Images I was expecting Sri Lanka to win the World Cup and come back home with the trophy after they won the Asia Cup. But they came back home bringing shame to the entire country. The country that was in world news for inflation and economic crisis was all of a sudden in the headlines for the wrong ...
Sri Lanka’s performance was along expected lines. Courtesy: Getty Images Sri Lanka’s 2022 T20 World Cup campaign came to an expected end when Australia beat Afghanistan at Brisbane. Save for the unexpected capitulation to Namibia, Sri Lanka’s campaign was largely along expected lines. Now that the sun has set on Sri Lanka’s campaign, let’s look at their performance, the positives ...
Credits: @OffcialSLC Sri Lanka punched above their weight to win the recent Asia Cup, and this has got everyone excited, right from the apostates no more to cricket agnostics. Hopes are flying high following the unexpected win, and fans and pundits alike now seem to be indulging in grandiose delusions about winning the World Cup next month. How good was ...
Dunith Wellalage made his international debut in the first ODI between Sri Lanka and Australia. Courtesy: Twitter (@OfficialSLC) “Wella…Wella…Wella…”, chanted the Sri Lankan crowd that had thronged the stadium when Dunith Wellalage came back to bowl his second spell in the third ODI between Sri Lanka and Australia. In a way, it was heartening to see how a teenage prodigy ...
Courtesy: AP Photo Surely, you must be kidding, right? How can you not pick someone who has scored 562 runs in 19 innings at an average of 29.57 in T20Is? Someone who has scored two fifties in his last two series? Someone, to top everything off, is now among the top ten T20I batters in the world? Definitely, this must ...
Courtesy: Reuters Ladies and gentlemen, Suranga Lakmal has announced his retirement. Sans much fanfare. Sans any media blitz. In a way, it is unfair on a bowler who has carried the entire weight of a fast-bowling attack on his own shoulders—shoulders for which the weight is ostensibly a few kilograms too many—for years. But, at the same time, this is ...
Lahiru Kumara has copped a lot of criticism for his failure at the death. Courtesy: Alex Davidson/Getty Images Of late, Lahiru Kumara has become a caricature in the consciousness of the Sri Lankan fandom, having failed to defend 15 and 16 runs off final overs in the T20 World Cup and the LPL respectively. His successive failures have made him ...
Courtesy: AFP One bowler picked up a five-wicket haul in his debut Test match in South Africa. The other bowler returned an eleven-wicket match figure in his debut to lead his team to a win against Bangladesh. Impressive as their debuts might be, and though the healthy rivalry between these two southpaws could bring the best out of both, Sri ...
Courtesy: ICC via Getty Sri Lanka’s run in the 2021 T20 World Cup may have come to an end but that has not stopped the island nation from regaling itself with the firm belief that they have unearthed new stars for the future, and with prophecies about the return of their halcyon days. Have Sri Lanka actually turned a corner ...
Why are Sri Lanka struggling in the shorter formats? Because their performance has declined over the years. When did Sri Lanka’s decline start? It was after the retirement of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardena. This is the popular theory. So, why haven’t Sri Lanka been able to come out of the rut yet? Because they believe that they declined and ...
Pathum Nissanka and Ashen Bandara are the two greenhorns Sri Lanka cricket has reposed its faith on to upend their fortunes in limited-overs cricket. Yet, their selection is baffling. Neither of them has a good record in the shorter formats at the domestic level. Nor were they picked to play in the inaugural Lanka Premiere League. So, how did they ...
They should be banished from the first-class game. It winds me up, if you are a spinner, spin the ball,” said Graeme Swann, arguably the second-best off-spinner to have played Test cricket since Murali’s retirement, about the trundlers in the English first-class system. He was right. In fact, “spinner” is often a misnomer in cricket that is liberally used to ...
Sri Lanka’s expected, recent defeat at the hands of England was their fifth straight loss to them at home. Quite predictably, it was the batsmen who were put in dock as the pundits and the fandom impetuously pinned the blame solely on the first innings performance that saw the home team trundle their way to 135 all out. Sri Lanka ...
This was supposed to be Sri Lanka’s second-string side. As many as ten ‘top-flight’ cricketers had withdrawn from the tour of Pakistan owing to security concerns. A wholesale drubbing was in the offing, many thought. After all, how could you expect the juniors to succeed where the seniors had failed? Nevertheless, the outcome wasn’t exactly a surprise, much less an ...
Before the provincial tournament that was played in the prelude to the World Cup, Ashantha de Mel had asked for 5mm of grass to be left on the pitches to mimic the ‘English’ conditions. Fast forward two months, the same Ashantha de Mel is complaining about green pitches in England during the World Cup. His complaint includes a whole laundry ...
A head coach in Sri Lanka is screened and interviewed before being appointed, and rightly so. However, it is not the case with a chief selector or anyone who is appointed to neutralize the powers of the coach and carry out the board’s agenda for that matter. You could be an old dude enjoying your retirement time sprawling in the ...
First Graeme Labrooy, who was seemingly Hathurusingha’s underling, was fired. Then, the incoming chief-selector went straight for Chandimal’s jugular as he took to task the Test skipper’s poor captaincy. No sooner than Samaraweera was axed and a new batting coach was appointed, Hathurusingha was evicted from the selection committee. Finally, Chandimal was dropped from the Test team and Dimuth ...
Criticisms have been rife against the Sri Lankan head coach for the lack of improvement in the fortune of the nation’s cricket team. Experts and fans alike have started to call for his head, and with the recent ministerial interventions, it is becoming clear by the day that an axe is indeed hanging over him. It has only been ...
Hathurusingha’s hiring was only a part of Sumathipala’s PR strategy. Chandika Hathurusingha was only a brand. As Thilanga Sumathipala was trying every trick up his sleeves to somehow ingratiate himself with the public through cricket, after having failed to get elected into the Parliament during the last general election, his last-ditch effort to augment his public image was to ...
Who is your favourite male cricketer?”, Indian women’s cricket team captain gets asked before the Women’s World Cup in England. “Do you ask that same question to a male cricketer? Do you ask them who their favourite female cricketer is?”, Mithali Raj ripostes. Enter gender politicians. This seemingly innocuous scenario is distorted in every possible way by self-styled feminists so ...
