by Rex Clementine

You do feel for Sri Lanka’s Head Coach Mickey Arthur. When the selectors called him up and discussed the way forward for the nation’s white ball teams banking on several young players, he agreed to rebuild the team with the likes of Niroshan Dickwella, Kusal Mendis and Danushka Gunathilaka forming the nucleus of the side. However, two months later, all three players were served with lengthy suspensions after they breached the bio-secure bubble during Sri Lanka’s tour of England early this year.

Left with a depleted side, Arthur spoke of the disappointment of having to play without three players on whom Sri Lanka Cricket had invested heavily over the last five years.

“That was a massive blow for us. You’re talking about three of your top-five batters in the white-ball format there. That was a bitter pill to swallow for sure. You suddenly got back to square one in terms of your planning again,” Arthur told journalists.

However, Arthur said that the positive for him was that some young players were able to grab their opportunities while some seniors were able to make comebacks.

“It was really disappointing, but it led us to find the likes of Charith Asalanka, who has come on beautifully. Then there is Kamindu Mendis, who’s playing beautifully. Pathum Nissanka probably got another opportunity. It’s allowed Dinesh Chandimal to come back into the mix. Bhanuka Rajapaksa to come back into the mix. So out of that adversity it’s allowed opportunities to other players,” Arthur noted.

While Sri Lanka’s bowling has fared well since the adoption of youth policy, it is the batting that has been a letdown and the absence of the suspended trio has been felt.

“I think if our batting clicks it’ll give us a really good chance because our bowling attack is very good and our fielding standards have improved dramatically. That is an area we’ve worked extremely hard on over the past nine days. We’ve had three practice games, we’ve had some skill sessions to prepare players to sweep, we identified where and how we want our players to play. We’ve almost scripted a game,” Arthur explained.

“It’s easy to stand and try and hit boundaries, but having the ability to deflect a ball into a gap off a good ball is a real art. That’s the real art of batsmanship. So, we’ve done a lot of drills during this phase, and we’ve harped on that. That’s something I’ve been working on for the last nine months with our group,” Arthur added.

Sri Lanka are currently in Oman and will play two T20 Internationals on Thursday and Saturday before flying to Abu Dhabi to begin preparations for the World Cup. They will have two warm-up games against Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea before the World Cup qualifier begins. Sri Lanka are grouped alongside Netherlands, Namibia and Ireland and need to win two games to proceed to the business end of the competition.

Sri Lanka won the T20 World Cup in 2014 in Dhaka and were runners-up in 2009 and 2012 in London and Colombo respectively.