Some observations on Sri Lanka's World Cup failure (23 July 1999)

23 July 1999

Some observations on Sri Lanka's World Cup failure

Herby Jayasuriya

The World Cup is now over. There has been a great deal of criticism against the Sri Lanka cricket team that played in this cup. Some individuals have completely slated the manner in which the side was selected. Some have criticised the way that the Sri Lankan cricketers performed in England. I do not think there were any articles that were written which gave any respite to our cricketers.

First and foremost I wish to state that the Sri Lankan team that left the shores of this country to play in the World Cup went with very great demoralised feelings. I say this because it was a great pity that the annual general meeting of the Cricket Board of Sri Lanka took place before the team left the island.

The last annual general meeting of the Cricket Board was a catastrophe. There were allegations of corruption, forgery, cheating, impersonation, intimidation and assault to have transpired during the course of this meeting. In fact what happened at the last annual general meeting was not at all the manner in which a meeting of this nature should have been conducted. It was definitely not "Cricket".

With the affairs of the Cricket Board in shambles one could never expect a Sri Lankan cricket team to perform well especially in a tournament which involved the "World Cup". The team left the country at a time when their "Mentor's" were in conflict and also there was action filed in our courts to ascertain as to whether the annual general meeting was conducted lawfully and the office bearers were lawfully elected. In fact I was wondering whether in this perplexing situation it was advisable to send our cricket team to play in this very important tournament. The other teams that played in this tournament did not have the ignormity of representing their country where their controlling body had gone into the law courts to ascertain whether they were legally constituted.

With regard to the selection of the Sri Lanka team it would have definitely been advantageous if we selected 2 more fast or medium pace bowlers because most of the wickets of this tournament were captured by this type of bowlers. Further if we selected a few up and coming young cricketers who are good alrounders instead of relying on some of the old brigade it would have certainly paid us dividends.

As it was the opinion of all who watched the matches in England or on the TV, our batsmen failed badly. The cause for most of our batsmen getting out was that they played the rising ball on the off stump straight into the hands of the slips or gully and gave these fielders a very easy catches that were gladly accepted by them. It would be advisable if our batsmen are instructed to leave most of the rising balls on the off stump without playing a stroke specially in the early part of their innings. Another fault of most of our batsmen was that they never played the backward defence stroke with a straight bat. They played this stroke with the bat at an angle and as such the ball trickled on to their stumps.

With regard to our bowling our pace bowlers have not mastered the secret of bowling in a 50 over match which is to bowl a three quarter pitch ball to rise almost to the height of the chest and also to bowl within the stumps as much as possible. I observed that our opponents always bowled in this manner and thereby made our batsmen not to play forceful strokes but to play defensively.

Our fielding was like a curate's egg. It needs improving. A modern fielding machine like the "Catchit" may improve it. Further the close in fielders must practice to throw the ball directly onto the stumps so that the batsmen will not take singles by playing the ball towards them.

Another great disadvantage our team faced was that we had to play in a completely different climate where the wickets were very different from the hard Asian pitches and favoured seam bowling.

I am not holding a brief for our team but in their defence it must be said that on reviewing the three matches we lost, perhaps if we won the toss in the match against England and put them into bat we may have faired much better. We were unlucky to lose the toss. In the match against India both Ganguley and Dravid scored most of their runs through drives or lofted drives between mid on and mid off where the boundaries were very short. If this match was played on a larger ground India would not have got this formidable score. It should also be mentioned that in this match 4 L.B.W. decisions were given against us all on the front foot. In these decisions too we did not get the benefit of the doubt. In spite of these two losses the match we should have won was the match against South Africa. In this match we bowled and fielded brilliantly to restrict South Africa to a total of 197 runs. However unfortunately our batsmen lacked patience to remain at the crease for a long period and thus failed to deliver the goods. After all in this context it must be mentioned we beat Zimbabwe who was victorious against South Africa and India in the preliminary round. At least we can take consolation in this victory.

Above are some of the observations I have to make regarding the performance of our team at the last World Cup. I wish to reiterate that the disorganised affairs of the Sri Lankan Cricket Board would have definitely had a psychological effect on the members of our team. They were representatives of a divided house and as the good book says "A house divided within itself cannot stand. It has to fall." Thank God our cricketers have not fallen, but have only failed and let us hope that they will live to fight another day. After all every dark cloud has a silver lining and the best is yet to be.

Source :: Daily News (https://www.lanka.net)