Where Did It All Go Wrong

Yesterday I read an FB status from a friend that suggested that ‘In Sri Lankans minds we ARE the greatest team ever’. And that I think is the problem. 

Sri Lanka has done well to get into four of possibly five ICC finals in the last few years. But that shouldn’t mask the fact that we haven’t really played stellar cricket to get there. I think we played our best in 2007 although we did lose to South Africa and Australia in that tournament. In 2011 we only beat Kenya, New Zealand and England, and were the ‘runners up’. Not entirely reflective no? And those games were at home too. 

In 2012 we beat Zimbabwe, West Indies and England. Also at home. We lost to South Africa, and didn’t meant India or Australia. The Pakistan semi was won on the toss of a coin regardless what anyone might say to the contrary (and short of going back and replaying the game I don’t know how else we can prove that). All the last few games played at RPS were won by the side batting first. Dodgy? I think so.

My personal conclusion is that given the process of reaching those finals, we haven’t really set the world on fire and played the sort of cricket that can give us the mantle of the second best team in the world at any particular point. 

There’s nothing wrong with winning at home. There’s nothing wrong with preparing spin friendly pitches where South Africa will give us a green top, and England give us clouds. But we mustn’t let our success in those conditions blind us to our obvious deficiencies in other areas. 

For instance this T20 we didn’t have enough boundary hitters in our line up. And T20 is a boundary sort of game. Tom Moody suggested that we’ll miss Kapu, and I absolutely agreed with him. Not to say that Kapugedera would have miraculously won us the cup, but he would have the ability to do what Samuels did. Thisara doesn’t have that ability, as much as you’d like to hope he does. And none of the other batsmen in the SL line up do either. And that’s not great preperation. We need to be ear marking guys, and getting them in the gym, and making sure that when push comes to shove they can heave the ball over the boundary. That’s what Samuels did. And if Samuels was a delicate little flower who was 5 and a half feet with wrists like flower stalks, then he wouldn’t have done that. I’m not saying clone Marlon. I’m saying make our guys as strong as they possibly can be.

My friend Indi tweeted during the game about how many ‘bundis’ there were protruding from the SL jersies. And that’s true. Lasith himself has got a little paunch. It’s not acceptable for a professional sportsman is it? And that’s a preperation issue. True you’ve got to bowl only 4 overs, but somehow the fitter you are the better you perform, and it’s just a reflection of how hard you’re working. I was watching the women’s final and some of those hotties are more athletic than our blokes. If you look at the work that Trevor Penney has done with India, they’re a much better fielding unit than they ever have been. Still not great. But improving every day. And we’re not. 

As far as I’m concerned nothing went wrong on the pitch that day. Everything that did go wrong, went wrong beforehand. The toss was always going to be crucial. Mahela admitted that the wicket was really slow and you couldn’t hit straight. Marlon did. He banged it straight. And hard, and long. WE couldn’t hit straight. And that is a problem. The over reliance on the risky behind the wicket shots is a problem. And that begins at u11 when little boys aren’t strong enough to hit the ball straight and rely on dabbing it with their delicate risks. If you ask me the way to ensure a good future, is to ban kids from playing behind the wicket till they’re about 15. 

It’s the dodgy shots that got Angelo and Mahela. The running between the wickets was equally important at RPS. In a team without boundary hitters, you practice running your twos and threes. Figure out your areas. We did nothing of that sort. Or at least our run outs didn’t look like we had worked very hard on it at practice.

I was watching an interview here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19633323 where Kumar says that if they get into the final they’ll talk about what they need to do. For Fuck’s Sake! You don’t need to talk about it, you need to go out and practice it. 

Go here http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10839280 and see how real Champion teams prepare. How they identify their problems and prepare for adversity. When Mahela lost the toss, it was pretty clear from his reaction that they hadn’t prepared for that eventuality. Or at least that’s what it looked like. 

So I’m finding no fault for SL losing on the day. It was a bad day for Mali. More often than not those yorkers hit the base of leg stump. That day Marlon got a hold of them. Happens to anyone. It’s not where we lost the game. We lost the game by assuming we’d smack the Windies. Sambit Bal said on my show yesterday that before the match started people were dancing in the streets. This was a comeuppance for their cricketing naivete. And deservedly so. We are not good enough to go around disrespecting other countries. Even India.  

We lost the game in preparing as a team. We lost the game before it even started.