Sri Lanka struggling to beat Zimbabwe isn’t a good sign

by Rex Clementine

Sri Lanka just managed to overcome Zimbabwe on Monday recording a two wicket win with an over to spare in the second ODI at RPS. There were several infamous batting collapses last year and we are seeing an extension this year as the team was reduced to 112 for six chasing a target of 209.

Newcomer Janith Liyanage fought well but failed to finish the job. At 172 for eight, still 37 runs required, Sri Lanka were scratching their heads. Eventually, Dushmantha Chameera and Jeffrey Vandersay saw the team over the line. Maheesh Theekshana too had chipped in. But many questions were unanswered about the batting unit. On many occasions in recent times, the bowlers had to bail out the team after the batting had failed.

Sri Lanka has no business to struggle against Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe had lost an ODI and T-20 series at home to Ireland recently and were knocked out of this year’s ICC T-20 World Cup after losing to Namibia and Uganda.

Their coach, David Houghton, the former Test captain, was forced to resign. Zimbabwe have come here even without their best batsman in Sean Williams, who is injured. So what’s the fuss in beating them?

The previous selection committee’s policy of playing too many ‘all-rounders proved to be disastrous, and the current committee seem to be continuing that thinking pattern.

Successful Sri Lankan teams have played six batters and one all-rounder, and the current team needs to go back to that combination.

Dasun Shanaka has been such a flop in ODI cricket that his average has dropped to 22 and there’s just one half-century to show in the last 20 innings. Earlier at least you could not drop him for he was the captain of the side, but there’s no such thing like that and if Janith Liyanage can provide you with what Dasun did, why do you persevere with him?

Hopefully for Thursday’s final ODI, Sri Lanka will steady the batting.

Liyanage came up with a match winning knock and fell agonizingly short of a well deserved hundred. “The ball started doing a bit and my plan was to see off that challenge and go on and finish the innings. More than the hundred what was important was winning the game. We had to beat the rain as well and the plan was to execute a boundary and stay ahead. But it didn’t pay off,” he told journalists after the game.

“I had got the feeling that they were going to stop the game after that over and we needed that boundary to stay ahead of Duckworth Lewis. I guess the intention was right, but the execution was wrong. Nevertheless, it was a good learning experience,” Liyanage added.