Sports
Selling your skippers down the river
by Rex Clementine
Last month, Kusal Janith Perera was made to look like a superstar. Sri Lanka’s selectors got him to captain the side, keep wickets, and open batting. Not even the ice cool M.S. Dhoni had been saddled with that many responsibilities.
This month, however, it has dawned onto the selectors that KJP is no superstar. Not only has he been sacked as the captain, he is also likely to be relieved of wicket-keeping duties. Don’t be surprised if they tell KJP to bat in the middle order during the ODIs.
Every defeat needs a scapegoat. We found a good one in KJP. Selling your skipper down the river, however, is nothing new. It is an age-old practice that successive establishments have used to make ends meet or even teach people lessons. Politicians have a lot to learn from our cricket.
We all know that Bandula Warnapura is not the mastermind of the rebel tour to South Africa. Those who plotted got away but Warnapura bore the brunt of it all. The commonly known fact is that he was banned for 25 years but there are lesser-known factors. For example, the second tour to South Africa that Dr. Ali Bacher had promised when he wooed the unsuspecting Sri Lankans never happened. That left the players high and dry. Warnapura had taken on a powerful government minister by taking the team to South Africa and he was made to suffer as the government made sure that his appeal for electricity was repeatedly turned down.
Simply because being the nephew of Bandula, young Malintha suffered too as he couldn’t get a school admission. None wanted to associate with the name of Warnapura.
Marvan Atapattu was an exemplary leader. He was destined to lead the team for a few years but a back injury forced him out of the side. When he returned, the captaincy was never given back to him. He was in fact ridiculed. Picked for the 2007 World Cup but wasn’t given a game and instead made to carry drinks. His persecutors today are legends of the game. Cricket is a funny game they say.
T.M. Dilshan took up the captaincy at a time when nobody wanted it. With Murali retired, Dilshan’s bowling resources were thin. He was in for a rude shock when the team’s premier fast bowler announced his retirement from Test cricket at the age of 27. Two of our captains on IPL duty in India justified the fast bowler’s retirement from Test cricket. The script and the plot had been written and planned at Perera Gardens. It was nicely executed too.
With limited resources Dilshan was rebuilding the team. Then the unthinkable happened. Usually when Sri Lankan teams go to South Africa Test matches barely last three days and often the tourists lose by an innings. But under Dilshan, Sri Lanka recorded their first Test win on South African soil in 2011. Before the tour was over, he was sacked as skipper. There had been a coup. A bloodless coup.
Poor Dinesh Chandimal was caught between the devil and the deep blue sea during contract negotiations ahead of the 2014 ICC World T-20 in Dhaka. He turned his back on the administration showing solidarity with seniors. Cricket’s bigwigs promised to teach him a lesson. Some seniors sensed the opportunity to settle old scores. So they slowed down the over rate. That resulted in Chandimal being suspended. The poor bloke suffered in silence and ever since has been a reluctant leader.
Angelo Mathews is a smart kid. He knew what some of these chaps were up to. So when he was captaining he told one of our legends that unless he finished his six balls in a stipulated number of minutes, he is not going to get a bowl again in the game. The fast bowler behaved. No more slower over rates.
Mathews, however, couldn’t win all his battles. He got fed up and gave up the captaincy in July 2017. Six months later there was a change in team management. They pleaded with Mathews to take up captaincy again. Reluctantly, he took it up and soon realized that it was a poisoned chalice with the very people who requested him to take up the role accusing him of under-performing. It’s just not cricket.
[Cricbuzz]
Why did David Miller refuse a single off the penultimate delivery with Delhi Capitals needing 2 off 2? It’ll be spoken of for a while, but not inside the Gujarat Titans change room. Because Prasidh Krishna bowled a nerveless slower bouncer off the final delivery that Miller missed, and Jos Buttler then nailed a direct hit with an underarm throw from behind the stumps to run out Kuldeep Yadav, clinching a dramatic first win for GT in IPL 2026.
Despite being adjudged run out on the field, Miller wasn’t in the mood to concede defeat, and reviewed the final ball for a possible wide. But when replays confirmed what he had perhaps known, he was crestfallen. Equally distraught in the dugout was K L Rahul, whose 52-ball 92 set the game up for DC but for one run.
It was GT’s first win of the tournament and the first loss for DC after starting the campaign with two wins in a row.
Thirty-six needed off 12. A bruised finger that didn’t make it easy for him to grip the bat had forced Miller to retire hurt with DC needing 81 off 42. But when Tristan Stubbs was run-out in the 17th over, Miller returned hoping to play second fiddle to Rahul. Instead, he was now expected to deliver a box-office hit with Rahul nicking behind off a full Mohammed Siraj delivery two balls later.
Miller nearly delivered what was expected, as he went 6, 4, 6 off Siraj, repeatedly peppering the short leg-side boundary. At the other end, Vipraj Nigam also ramped four off a short delivery to bring the equation down to a manageable 13 off the final over.
Prasidh was tasked to bowl the final over. His three overs prior to that had been walloped for 41; Rahul, his state mate, had climbed into him earlier in the night. But all that would’ve been forgiven if Prasidh delivered a gun final over. That GT could only have four fielders out due to a slow over rate added to his challenge. And he nearly succumbed.
Nigam made room and swung cleanly to hit the first ball to the long-off fence, but a rush of blood had him swipe the second delivery to Shubman Gill at mid-off. With DC now needing nine off four, Kuldeep gently deflected his first ball to deep third to leave the chase in Miller’s hands.
With the equation down to 8 off 3, Prasidh bowled a slot-ball that Miller walloped over long-off. But with two needed, Miller inexplicably refused a single to take it all upon himself to finish the deal. He couldn’t connect on the final ball, and Prasidh belted a roar. GT had pulled one from under DC’s rug in dramatic circumstances.
After scores of 1 and 0 in his first two games, Rahul announced himself with a 29-ball half-century that was as pleasing as they come for large parts. It was also one that didn’t have the baggage of him playing run-accumulator, like he has tended to in the past while opening the batting. This Rahul was fun, free and fearless and he helped DC overcome a few roadblocks along the way, like when they lost two wickets in two deliveries to Rashid Khan at the halfway mark.
Rahul was particularly menacing against the fast bowlers, and it began with a wristy flick that he sent way back over deep square off Kagiso Rabada. The early jitters out of the way – if he even had some inkling of them – he batted like a man possessed, fearlessly climbing into length balls from Prasidh over cover, and slapping disdainfully over point.
He is good, but where is the Rashid of old, they asked. Turns out he hadn’t gone anywhere. After he conceded just nine in his first two with DC rampant, he returned to dismiss Nitish Rana in his dramatic third over, the 10th of the innings. Having been given out lbw earlier, only for Rana to overturn the decision through DRS, he was out a few balls later when he miscued a googly to Sai Sudharsan at long-off. This was Rana’s third sub-20 score of the season.
This brought the in-form Sameer Rizvi to the middle, and he lasted all of one delivery as Rashid snuck through his inside-edge with a ripping googly to briefly elicit jitters in the DC camp. This is when Miller entered, before briefly exiting with seven overs left. But in the same over, when Rashid had Axar Patel slice one to Glenn Phillips running back from cover, GT started to have an opening.
On any other night, Rashid’s spell would have cracked open the game. The fact that DC were still in it despite these wickets was down to Rahul. It needed the skilful Siraj to dismiss him with DC needing 45 off three overs. By then, the pressure was telling.
That GT were eventually able to get over the line was down to their run cushion, made possible thanks to half-centuries from Jos Buttler, Gill and Washington Sundar. Buttler looked unshackled, hitting four sixes off his first 15 deliveries en route a bruising half-century, while Gill played himself in and then allayed fears of neck spasms during his takedown of Kuldeep with the slog sweep. Then Washington, promoted to No. 4, struck his maiden IPL fifty to shore up the innings.
Even so, GT managed just 49 off the last five. On another day, this may have proved to be costly. It didn’t on Wednesday, and for that, they have Rashid to thank.
Brief scores:
Gujarat Titans 210 for 4 in 20 overs (Sai Sudarshan 12, Shubman Gill 70, Jos Buttler 52, Washington Sundar 55, Glenn Phillips 14*; Mukesh Kumar 2-55, Lungi Ngidi 1-24, Kuldeep Yadav 1-42 ) beat Delhi Capitals 209 for 8 in 20 overs (Pathum Nissanka 41, KL Rahul 92, David Miller 41*, Vipraj Nigam 12; Mohammed Siraj 1-42, Rashid Khan 3-17, Prasidh Krishna 2-52) by one run
[Cricinfo]
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