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After a dismal 2023 World Cup, the Sri Lankan team’s
consultant coach Mahela Jayawardene blamed a large portion of the team’s
problems on the kinds of surfaces being built for local cricket in Sri Lanka.
He claimed that these pitches had not prepared their spinners for conditions
that made them have to work harder for their wickets, nor had they enabled
their hitters to be at peak hitting form going into the World Cup in India on
flatter decks.
Sri Lanka did not make it into the 2025 Champions
Trophy after finishing ninth in the points rankings. Only once, against
Pakistan, were they able to score more than 280 runs in the five times they
batted first.
“We knew that when we went to India, looking at
the wickets, that we had to play at a very high tempo, which we discussed with
the batters,” Jayawardene said. “It was something that they were not
used to, particularly leading up to the World Cup did not allow us to do that –
and most of the surfaces that we play in Sri Lanka.’
“In domestic cricket we play on pretty slowish
wickets so the batters aren’t going to trust their shot selection on good
wickets, because they’re not used to that, against high quality bowling.”
Pathum Nissanka and Sadeera Samarawickrama were
consistent top-order contributors among the batting, while Dilshan Madushanka
led the bowling attack. Following his 21 wickets, Kasun Rajitha had the
next-highest figure for Sri Lanka with eight, followed by Angelo Mathews and
Maheesh Theekshana with six each.
Sri Lanka was particularly harmed by Theekshana’s
difficulties, but there was very little assistance in the form of alternative
spin options. Once again, Jayawardene placed the blame on the domestic pitches,
which are known to suit spin bowling. Crucially, though, these pitches do not
require extra revolutions to be imparted on the ball, as some successful World
Cup spinners, like Mitchell Santner and Ravindra Jadeja, have been known to do.
“When we play in Sri Lanka, the number of good
wickets we play on is very low. So on those wickets it’s not really necessary
for our spinners to bowl with any sort of overspin – which is what is needed to
succeed on wickets like those in India. That’s where we see a big difference in
our spinners.
“If you take someone like Rangana Herath, he
played years in England, so he had that skill. What we need to see is how we
get our spinners to acquire those skills. At the moment, if you even take a
player from the Under-19s they will first play in domestic cricket. But to get
them to the right level, we need them to play on good wickets.
“We’ve run the numbers in the high performance
centre, and at the moment 66% of the deliveries bowled in domestic cricket are
by spinners. We even saw a match last week where the whole innings was bowled
by spinners. These the major problems we have to address. It’s only if we fix
these problems that we can take Sri Lankan cricket to where it needs to be even
in the next 10 years.”