What we learned from the 137th Battle of the Blues

We didn’t learn it, but it was confirmed that cricket is a gloriously uncertain sport. And in that sense is one of the most directly relevant sports to life as well. Sometimes you’re on top, sometimes you’re not. You just have to tough it out sometimes, and if other things – things you can’t control – contrive in your favour, you may just win.

Life, like cricket, is also large periods of boredom, with defining moments, and your fortunes dictated by good decisions, bad decisions, randomness and unfailing hindsight.

WHAT a game of cricket though. It’s rarely that a team scoring 350/5 ends up on the losing side, but that’s what happened. Occasionally, as in life, things get away from you. Let’s look at some of the decision making that we can learn from off the field:

1. Royal won the toss and put STC in. Probably not the smartest call in the world, but it showed Royal’s diffidence with the bat. It could also have been due to the fact that Royal were trying to exploit whatever movement was on the dead SSC wicket early doors. It didn’t work. And rarely does, unless you’ve got a great seam attack and your playing at the WACA or Port Elizabeth. In the aftermath of the win, it is going to be a decision that was ignored. But it was a bad one.
2. The funny thing about bad decisions, is that if luck favours you, and Opatha and Mendis had fallen to the Royal bowlers early on, the decision would have looked miraculously smart. But such is life. The lesson being, make the decision that has the best probabilities of success. Royal’s attack was not terrifying. Their best bowler was a spinner. Even though they won, it was not a smart call. Paradoxically though, sometimes, risks need to be taken.
3. Opatha batted with a rare confidence. When the Big Match is all you’ve been waiting your 18 years for, it’s difficult to command such ease at the crease. However, Opatha’s knock was reminiscent of Karunaratne’s knock in ’97, the fastest hundred before this one. Both boys were supremely confident in their own ability and refused to be overawed by external pressures. If only this was an easy state of mind to achieve. When it is achieved though, the results are spectacular. Try to achieve it.
4. Unfortunately, the Thomians also took their foot off Royal’s neck when they shouldn’t have. Perhaps the initial plan was to get to 350 and declare. STC would have batted first if they won the toss. But when circumstances show that the opposition is jittery, then it’s necessary to kill them off. Ruthlessness is not a Sri Lankan thing, especially not in sport. It showed. With Sachitha Jayathilaka smashing Royal to all parts of the ground, and plenty of batting to come, STC should probably have gone on. 400 or 420 and Royal would probably never have recovered. Because of their rate of scoring this would not have impacted the game and may have ensured that the Thoras wouldn’t need to bat again. It was a lesson in being flexible enough to deviate from game plans and play what’s in front of you. Preparation is a good thing. However, real preparation is being able to identify weaknesses on the fly, and being good enough to exploit them. Coming back on Friday morning with Royal having slept on conceding a mammoth score and the bowlers rested, STC may have done a little better.
5. In the field, the Thomians looked a completely different side to they did with the bat in hand. The same confident swagger was missing and even at 96/4 after lunch, centurion Sooriyabandara, who showed very little attacking intent, was not put under the sort of pressure Jayathilaka had the luxury of putting him under. The only way you win, is if you’re prepared to risk losing. And S. Thomas’ seemed more intent on not losing even when they were in a strong position. It was a complete turnaround from the attitude that had served them so well with the bat. Positivity.
6. Royal, after their blunder of putting a strong batting side in and conceding a large first innings total, fought back brilliantly. Sooriyabandara’s obdurate innings brought back memories of Gamini Perera’s stubborn refusal to get out at the P Sara in ’92. Together with Kariyawasam he batted for almost 3 sessions and brought his team out of a lot of trouble. At one stage he had batted for nearly 3 hours for his 50 and then went 45 minutes without scoring a run. “If you can keep your head while all around you are losing theirs…”. Well done, young man. Often, in sport, you have one job. Do it.
7. After the fresher’s heroics, Royal then began to believe. It was a smart, bold decision to declare behind the Thomians’ score. The best decision Royal made all game. So much so that it invited STC to make a statement with the bat. In true Thomian fashion they died trying to make exactly that statement, by putting quick runs on the board and giving Royal a target. The decision by Royal was a canny one. Perhaps unwittingly. What did it do? It goaded STC into a sense of overconfidence and almost indignation. While Royal had spurned the chance of a first innings win, it gave the favourites, and hitherto dominant team an opportunity to emphasise their dominance. To show that 9 years without the shield is an aberration. However, when faced with the task of doing so, the Thomians succumbed to self destruction.
8. When a team punches above its weight with you, and then does something cheeky, like saying “Go on then…” it’s difficult as the dominant team not to fall into the egotistical trap of saying “Right, we’ll show you buggers”. Which seems to be what STC did. They departed from the batting order that had worked for them in the first innings and adopted a strategy that has consistently failed, by sending pinch hitters up the order. It doesn’t work for Seekuge Prassanna or Thisara Perera and it didn’t work for STC. Why wouldn’t you want Sachitha coming in in the middle order and destroying Royal’s bowling as he did in the first innings? Why send him and the talented Gunathilaka in at 8 and 9. It was a brain freeze, and a lack of respect to the fundamentals of cricket. Get your best batters in early. The resulting chaos caused panic which Ramanayake gladly used to get his 4 for. It was rank bad strategy, and quite apart from the defensiveness in the field, it was this avoidable second innings collapse that lost the match for STC.
9. Nevertheless, with 150 to make it was never going to be an easy chase. Although in theory Royal had 48 overs, STC were never going to be able to bowl that before the light gave out. So Royal basically had about two hours to score the runs, and not the easy 3 runs an over that was being touted at the time. Royal did it brilliantly, attacking from one end while the promoted Sooriyabandara held up another end. It was a difficult chase, but with the momentum now completely having been surrendered to them, Royal ‘took her home’.
10. Once again, STC fell victim to not playing to their strengths. The positivity that Opatha set in his first essay was completely missing from the bowling performance in the second innings. With Royal creditably chasing a win from ball one  the Thomians needed to turn the screws. However, in an effort to deprive Royal of the necessary overs in which to score the runs Jayathilaka – possibly on instruction – kept his fast bowlers on, despite being in possession of a vaunted spin attack on a last day track which was spitting dust. Once again, the mindset of preventing the other side from winning, rather than trying to beat them with your strengths, backfired. Jayathilaka brought himself on way to late but picked up two wickets. The chinaman bowler took a wicket in his first over while turning it square, but it was too little too late. The effort to eat up time by bowling pacies took away from the strength of the Thomian team, i.e. – its spinners. It was an unfortunate error in judgment. It was defensive.
11. Despite the credit that Royal have got for the final result, and deservedly so, this is very much a match that S. Thomas’ squandered. Not so much for lack of skill, but due to an inability to make good decisions. The lack of an ability to stick to what works.
12. Most of the discipline of sport is to play to your strengths regardless of the opposition trying to put you off. When it mattered, the Thomians departed from those strengths. The mental aptitude to stick to what has always worked for you, is the key to success.

This is why Clive Woodward didn’t worry about playing ugly rugby in 2003. It’s why Arjuna Ranatunga played the way he did in 1996. It’s why the Golden State Warriors are as good as they are in the NBA. It is why Stephen Donald kicking the goal that won the RWC 2015 says “eyes on the ball, follow through”.  They recognise the quality of their preparation, their strengths and weaknesses and back themselves. They don’t respond to the opposition with rigidity, but with flexibility.

As much as the defeat will spur STC on in the Mustangs Trophy next week, both teams need to be commended for the monumental effort on the field. There were some heroic performances, and two excellent team performances as well, strategy nothwithstanding. With 7 outright wins this year the Thomian camp is in good shape, albeit getting duped into departing from their proven track. As someone said at the post match dinner – “There is no Royal without S. Thomas’, and no S. Thomas’ without Royal”.

A good time, was had by all.