by Rex Clementine

Tuesday night the national cricket team’s status can only be summed up thus; brain-dead. Literally, everyone watching the match knew that Lakshan Sandakan that day was a spent force but Chamika Karunaratne was on a roll but no one seemed to be worried to pass the message onto captain Dasun Shanka.  The end result was Sri Lanka snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

For a man who humbled Pakistan in their own backyard not so long ago, Shanaka sadly was out of depth on Tuesday and was running out of ideas faster than Bandula Gunawardene.

Shanaka’s deputy Dhananjaya de Silva is equally at fault. He is the most experienced player in the side and he did not bother to speak to the captain on bowling changes and field placing. Into the bargain, he played a horror shot to get out and his body language is not sending the right signals.  Dhananjaya is a laid back character and your assumptions on him could be wrong but he needs to be more proactive now that the team is thin on experience.

Sandakan was shocking. Serving up full tosses every over and then having little control. He bowled seven wides. He is a T-20 player and has had decent success in the shortest format of the game. The problem is that our selectors expect him to succeed in the 50 over format as well having seen his success in T-20s. That’s recipe for disaster.  Sandakan has to spend a considerable amount of time with Piyal Wijetunga on his accuracy. Such a shame that someone who made his debut five years ago is struggling for accuracy and bowling like a schoolboy.

Many are faulting Dasun for bowling Sandakan’s full quota. It looks that Dasun was playing it safe. Nobody is going to blame him because he had backed his specialist bowler. It is however a blessing in disguise that this happened. Now Sandakan has nowhere to hide in the ODI format and needs to improve considerably if he is to make a comeback. Less said about his fielding the better.

There is also Bhanuka Rajapaksa, all talk and no show. He is another T-20 player who has been played in the wrong format. When the selectors kept half a dozen seniors out of the side, they said that they wanted more energy on the field. Well, look whom they have filled the side with. Apart from Bhanuka and Sandakan, there are other sloppy fielders like Avishka Fernando, Kasun Rajitha and Charith Asalanka. Rajitha was a disgrace and he alone gave away some 15 runs in the second ODI. Such a shame that all these players are young and they have not put in the hard yards on a discipline  that Sri Lankans have been neglecting for quite a long time now.

Trevor Bayliss when he was Head Coach of Sri Lanka made training the day before the game optional. Some senior with 100 Test caps to their names skipped training. But some seniors like Kumar Sangakkara and Muttiah Muralitharan didn’t like it and trained. They were obsessed with training. The practice has been continued. Today, a Minod Bhanuka who had just walked into the side when it is announced that training is optional, skips training.

So is Bhanuka Rajapaksa. So is Charith Asalanka, whom they have identified as a future leader. That basically sums up our cricket. Players with huge egos. To put it in other words, small minds in big places.