When finding one slinger in a team is rare enough, Sri Lanka now enjoy the luxury of playing two slingers in Matheesha Pathirana and Nuwan Thushara in the same team. With two bowlers bowling with the same action, a tendency among fans and some experts to see them as like-for-like can be seen. This article examines the veracity of ...
Courtesy: X The Impact Player rule introduced in 2023 allows teams in the IPL to substitute a player in their XI with an Impact Player at certain stages of a game. Even though teams can use this to lengthen either their batting or bowling, the common belief is that teams deepen their batting with the additional player, and that has ...
Courtesy: BCCI It is not an exaggeration to say that Wanindu Hasaranga is Sri Lanka’s best white-ball spinner since the retirement of Muthiah Muralidaran. Even though not a big spinner of the ball, his impeccable accuracy and well-disguised googly make him one of the most potent spinners in white-ball cricket at present. However, he has so far not been able ...
Courtesy: AFP Earlier this year, South Africa’s Dean Elgar retired from Tests, eliciting discussions on X about the best contemporary Test openers. A few weeks later, there was another discussion on Sri Lanka’s greatest test batsmen. Missing from both conversations was Dimuth Karunaratne, which was not at all surprising given his very low profile. This article tries to fill this ...
Courtesy: tripsavvy.com Ever since hosting the first recorded cricket match on the island in 1832, Colombo, the bustling business capital of Sri Lanka, has been the epicenter of cricket in the country. With as many as three active international cricket grounds and two other grounds that have hosted international matches sometime in the past, Colombo remains the lifeblood of cricket ...
Courtesy: ANI A casual look at the way Sadeera Samarawickrama operates in ODIs should tell you where his strength lies, which is in the ease with which he plays spin and the numbers shore it up. In 2023, he averaged 60.13 against spin in ODIs while striking at 96.98 in contrast to 36.9 at 95.84 against pace. Even though his ...
Mathews has won. Just three balls into his spell in his comeback match, Angelo Mathews has Dawid Malan nick behind. He has given Sri Lanka their first breakthrough. He has put the brakes on England when they were threatening to get going. But hang on. He is not done yet. Is this him zoning in on the ball from ...
Courtesy: Wisden Sri Lanka need another 42 runs off 41 balls with 6 wickets in hand to beat Pakistan and advance to the final of the 2023 Asia Cup. Kusal Mendis has just been dismissed and out walks Sri Lanka’s captain Dasun Shanaka ahead of the resident number 6 Dhananjaya de Silva. The rationale is to kill the chase early. ...
Courtesy: Getty Images One of the most well-known unknown cricket facts widely shared on the Internet is that Sanath Jayasuriya has more ODI wickets than Shane Warne. It goes without saying that Sanath’s trailblazing exploits with the bat upstaged his bowling prowess during his time. Even though his prowess with the ball is widely acknowledged now, his bowling career still ...
Courtesy: AFP/Getty Images Kusal Mendis once again finds himself in a territory he has been all too familiar with throughout his career. His recent performance has breached the tolerance point and there is a fresh social media campaign to oust him from the national team. Why does he get so much hate? Has the Kusal Mendis experiment gone a bit ...
During the press conference following the conclusion of the first day of the second Test against Ireland at Galle, Piyal Wijetunga, the national spin bowling coach of Sri Lanka had no qualms throwing his 11-Test-old protégé Ramesh Mendis under the bus for his poor show in the first innings. What was even more concerning was his passing reference to ...
Sri Lanka have made Pathum Nissanka a white-ball specialist based on his red-ball numbers. Courtesy: RANDY BROOKS/AFP/Getty Images Even though it went largely unnoticed, Pathum Nissanka’s omission from the playing XI during the Test series against Pakistan last year was a bolt from the blue. This year, the selectors went one step further and dropped him altogether from the Test ...
Courtesy: Outlook India The ODI leg of Sri Lanka’s tour of India produced expected outcomes both on the field and off it. Sri Lanka were expected to lose the ODI series to India in India—to one of the favorites to win the World Cup in a country Sri Lanka have historically fared worse. At the same time, the demands to ...
Courtesy: AFP In Sri Lanka, no one is sent home permanently. It doesn’t take too long for a messiah to become a pariah, and then a messiah once again. All it takes is a clever manipulation of optics. In this perennially nostalgic part of the world, the past can be easily made to seem better than the present. This holds ...
Courtesy: Sri Lanka Cricket The third edition of the Lanka Premier League concluded recently with Jaffna scoring a hat-trick of championships by beating Colombo in the final. Even though this season was a damp squib as the mainstays of Sri Lanka’s T20I team failed to impress mostly, it did unearth a few talents and allowed a few national players to ...
If Jaffna has won the champions trophy twice in a row in the LPL, then Kandy has the infamy of winning the wooden spoon twice in a row. Will their fate be any better this time around or are they going to once again find themselves at the bottom of the table? Let’s find out. Like what we have ...
The two times champions Jaffna will enter this tournament hoping to make it three in a row and in this article, we shall see if they have got the team to do it. As we did with the previous analysis, we will analyze Jaffna’s squad by looking at their powerplay, middle-over, and death-over batting, while with the ball, will ...
The bridesmaids of the league so far, Galle will be dearly hoping that they avoid another final defeat. But before that, do they have a team that can take them to the final this time as well? Let’s find out in this article. As was the case with the previous squad analysis, we will be taking Galle’s squad under ...
Despite consistently fielding one of the strongest teams on paper, Dambulla has struggled to reach the finals thus far, and once again they will enter the tournament as one of the favorites. What makes them favorites and what should their team look like? We shall see this in this article. As we have done with the previous squad analysis, ...
Colombo could reach only as far as the knockouts in both editions of the LPL, and they will be looking to do at least one better this time around. In this article, we will be taking a look at their squad, its strengths, and weaknesses, and if they have got what it takes to go all the way in ...
