Ideal foundation for SL World Cup drive to take off
From a turbulent phase of senior player retirements, Sri Lanka’s national cricket has come alive within a short time frame on a concentrated drive driven by Sri Lanka Cricket’s (SLC) dynamic President Thilanga Sumathipala and his administration. While the highly cricket versed Sumathipala, who had to wade off several bouncers that long stood in his way of realizing his much cherished passion of serving the country’s cricket in putting things back on track, his chosen faithful Mohan de Silva, as Secretary has combined in very fruitful decisions backed by a highly capable Executive Committee. As Sri Lanka has admirably put behind the recent losses by an emphatic 3-0 Test series comeback sweep of Australia, it is the ideal upswing trendsetter to the build up road ahead. Of course, the 2019 Cricket World Cup should be the priority of the former holders of the envious mega cup.
In that vein, the reminder coming from high up from the Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe to the administration and the players to get into rhythm from now should serve in getting the cricket machinery attuned towards the right anointment. This is particularly so given the fact that past world cup build ups since winning it in 1996 have been luke warm. Several selections towards getting the right combinations came in eleventh hour moves. This left no satisfactory time frame for the players to derive the winning cohesion that comes by only gelling together as a team for a considerable period. The current cricketing drive does have all the right hallmarks of realising a potential winning combination by 2019. The Sri Lanka Cricket (SLC) administration has vitally set in motion a handpicked foreign expertise team from Head Coach, Graham Ford to High Performance Manager, Simon Willis and more recently Fitness Trainer, Nick Lee. These are core performance drilling areas that the SLC President, Sumathipala and his administration has effectively addressed; areas that were glaringly neglected by the previous interim administration that led to a precipitation of the country’s cricket.
Heartening is that the road to the 2019 World Cup has seen an administration accentuation on young players which has pleasingly helped unearth quite a number of very talented players such as batsman Kusal Mendis, batsman cum all-rounder Dhananjaya de Silva and left arm spinner Lakshan Sandakan. While this trio is apparently the effective nucleus in having infused the necessary impetus that was lacking in the team, there are several more youngsters fine combed by the selectors. While Sandakan, who had an impressive test debut against Australia with his Chinamon delivery, did not get selected for the lost ODI series, the selectors should do well to reverse their decision of having looked at him only as a Test cricket option. Also, young teenage schoolboy batting prodigy Avishka Fernando, who was not considered after his debut ODI duck against Australia, deserves to be groomed ahead of the world cup given the tremendous flourish with which he batted in the Sri Lanka Under-19 XIs series triumph in England.
Also, the 100 contracted player basis by Sri Lanka Cricket is timely in looking to getting on track a potential young team for the next world cup. This reads as 30 National and ‘A’ Team players (Central Contracts), 20 Youth Players (Emerging Category contract), 25 State Players/Senior Veterans, and 25 Provincial players to uplift the standard of club cricket. Importantly, the one to one discussion between the players of all categories and the officials of SLC, led by President Thilanga Sumathipala on September 10 was a realistically forging ahead initiative by SLC. The cricket administration has done its job of putting in place the right machinery towards achieving a nation’s great expectations of winning the cricket world cup for a second time. Now, it is left to the selectors to make the right choices and ideally get a pool 3 years from now gelling together preparing for the mega event. The ideal combination could be realized only by a team that plays together long term. The best example of this is India and Australia with the latter as a sub continent nation the better example to Sri Lanka in winning two world cups under Mahendra Singh Dhoni. That Indian ascension started from scratch with a young Dhoni assigned the task of marshalling a host of young blood which he did admirably in a long term drive from a dark chapter of Indian cricket that had seen several foreign coaches including Greg Chappell sacked.
By Srian Obeyesekere
-The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Sri Lanka Cricket-
