Lahiru Kumara – handle with care

by Rex Clementine

Handle with care is a warning that we get on packages containing glass, silverware or other valuable electronic items. In other words, fragile items. The same label should be pasted on the locker room of Lahiru Kumara, the fast bowler who has failed to realize his potential due to a series of injuries.

The thing with fast bowlers is that you can teach them to swing the ball away from a batsman or into a batsman, or other key elements of the trade. However, what can not be taught is pace. Either you have it or you don’t have it. Lahiru Kumara is blessed with pace and occasionally with that pace he does wonders.

The Lanka Premier League fixture between Colombo Strikers and Galle Titans this week had everything to play for. The winners were going for the playoffs while the losers were going home. Lahiru Kumara decided who was going where.

Kumara set up the game nicely for Galle through his raw pace. First he went through the defences of the in form Pathum Nissanka and the next over was even better as the stumps of Pakistan captain and world’s number three ranked batter Babar Azam’s were scattered.

There’s no better sight in the sport than a Dhananjaya de Silva cover drive or Lahiru Kumara steaming in sending down thunderbolts that are clocked at 150kmph.

Kumara has let us down yes. Every year since 2019, he has suffered an injury – mostly in the lower body – in middle of a game. Often these have been hamstringing injuries and the team has felt the pinch every time with a bowler down. The last time it happened was during the World Cup Qualifiers in Zimbabwe a couple of weeks ago.

Now that Kumara has come up with some impressive efforts in the Lanka Premier League, the selectors will be tempted to play him in the Asia Cup. Let’s not rush him. Let’s handle him with care. Let him feature only in T-20 cricket for the time being while working on his fitness and maybe if he is all there we can think of the World Cup.

The blunder the selectors have done with him over the years is that they have got carried away and tried to use him in every format. It is in Test match cricket that he has been most vulnerable having broken down at Gabba in 2019 and then at Centurion in 2020, Pallekele 2021 and Mohali 2022.

Maybe at the moment Test match cricket should be out of Lahiru Kumara’s equation.

A closer look at his statistics will tell you that he has been backed to play Test cricket more. His numbers are identical having played 26 Tests, 26 ODIs and 26 T-20 Internationals. As of now, he shouldn’t be adding more to his Test match numbers.Kumara has always had pace. But in recent months he has developed discipline as well bowling impeccable lines and lengths and that’s what make him deadly.

Maybe not the smartest bowler in setting batsmen up like Chaminda Vaas, Kumara’s pace has done the trick for him always. Occasionally, he had been taken to the cleaners like during the T-20 World Cup against South Africa in Sharjah when David ‘Killer’ Miller delivered some painful blows. But that’s part of a player’s development.

At that point, the loss was a bitter pill to swallow for the bowler, the team and the fans, but that ordeal has stood in good stead for Kumara and the captains nowadays tend to trust him to bowl the death overs. That certainly is a good sign.

Kumara’s is an interesting story. He initially was a hockey player at Sri Sumangala, Kandy and a blow to the head from the hockey stick saw him ending up at the Kandy General Hospital for a few days with several stitches. His mother urged him to give up the sport but he vowed to continue. The mum then went home and burnt up his hockey stick sending his hockey dreams in ashes.

Then Kumara took to cricket, a late developer. That brilliant spotter of talents Sampath Perera was impressed with what he saw and offered him a scholarship to Trinity College. While at Trinity, Roy Dias, Sri Lanka’s Under-19 coach was convinced that the boy was made of special stuff and drafted him into the squad. That team went onto beat England Under-19 in 2016.

Lahiru wasn’t the only player that Roy coached on that tour. There were a host of future stars – Pathum Nissanka, Wanindu Hasaranga, Avishka Fernando, Charith Asalanka and Asitha Fernando – just to name a few. There’s no better coach around in cricket than Roy to groom your young players and he is continuing to mentor the up-and-coming talents.