The Sri Lanka cricket team performances has not fallen to such despairing levels at home where they have apart from being white-washed 3-0 lost all three Tests well inside four days, the last Test played at Pallekele in particular in two and a half days to say the least.
What we’ve seen in this Test series is a decline in batting performances where from scoring 291 in the first innings at Galle, they have shrunk to 183 at the SSC and 135 at Pallekele. Their only saving grace was the second innings at SSC where they showed some fight after being asked to follow-on and ran up a score of 386, but still lost by an innings.
No one expected Sri Lanka to beat India, the current number one ranked Test side but losing in this manner without a fight is something that even their most ardent fans will find hard to stomach. The failure of Sri Lanka to last the distance (five days) in all three Tests is a major cause for concern.
What that meant was that the batsmen were not geared to play out session by session and wear out the Indian bowlers who bowled with much control and discipline and to their well set fields playing on the patience of the Lankan batsmen who eventually succumbed to it.
What the series revealed was that the talent was there but it is the system through which they come that is not strong enough for the players to bridge the gap between first-class cricket played at home and Test cricket. The first class structure needs to be seriously revamped and upgraded to a level where the competition is high and competitive.
Two Sri Lankan cricketers one past and the other present have shown concern on the current first-class domestic structure and voiced their personal opinions.
Sri Lanka Test opener Dimuth Karunaratne said: “India play a lot of good cricket. They’ve played a lot of IPL and first-class cricket. In Sri Lanka we only have 8 to 10 domestic matches in first-class. Then we have five one-dayers. That’s it for the season. We have to play more first-class cricket and then we can find more players who can dominate the game. That’s the thinking – what Sri Lanka Cricket has to work on for the players.”
Former fast bowling ace Chaminda Vaas who is the fast bowling coach of the current side also spoke on similar lines when he said: “We can’t be satisfied with the way first-class cricket is played. We need to make first-class cricket work for fast bowlers. We talk a lot about what ails first-class cricket, but no matter how much we talk, the issue hasn’t moved forward.
“If we want to develop our cricket and increase the number of fast bowlers we have – if we want to do justice to our cricket - we need to make pitches that are suited to fast bowlers. If we do that I trust that our bowlers would be better off than they are now.”
It was a shame to hear Indian cricketing legend Sunil Gavaskar make the comment on television that the present Sri Lanka side may not be able to compete even against a Ranji trophy team – India’s first-class domestic tournament. To such a low depth has the national cricket team’s standards sunk.
These are serious comments that the administrators who run Sri Lanka Cricket must sit back and take notice of quite critically and try to address the plunge before it is too late and fans start losing interest in the national cricket team and look for something elsewhere to spend their money and day.
The damage has already been done by diluting the first-class domestic system and the school system and what we see today is the result of it. There is no point blaming the poor cricketers for their failures on the cricket field when they have not been provided with a strong filter system to make it to the top from schoolboy level to the national team.
Another area that administrators must address is the specialised coaches they have under their wing who have been given extended runs regardless of their performances. By employing coaches for longer periods there is no new input coming into the system. When the game is making great advances in techniques all over the world coaches need to be on the ball so that they can keep their noses ahead of their opponents. The performances of the coaches need to be reviewed every two years and changes made if he has not shown any level of improvement.
Sri Lanka Cricket talks so much of the support they have received from Asian neighbours India and Pakistan so why not seek their advice on how best Sri Lanka arrest this downward trend. India didn’t become the number one ranked Test side overnight they made changes that were necessary and put certain things right in their system to become the team they are today.
Sri Lanka can learn a lot from them, but only if they are concerned and committed.
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