Bangalore’s November rain, predicted and promised, never came to hamper the clash at the Chinnaswamy Stadium Yet, Sri Lanka sank. And with them, also sank the hopes of their Asian counterparts – Afghanistan and Pakistan, unintentionally invoking the spirit of Gulbadin Naib 2019. “Hum to doobe hai sanam, tum ko bhi lekar doobenge” (If I’m going down, I’ll take you with me).

On Thursday, their challenge wasn’t blown away the way it was against India in the Asia Cup final. Not by an inspired bowling spell by the opposition in helpful conditions, but by a more uninspired batting performance of their own. There were patches of dominance when Kusal Perera took the attack to the New Zealanders early on. There were patches of fight with both bat and ball, but too late to repair much of the early damage. But the momentum – on a pitch that was much slower and vastly different from the one offered in the previous game at the same venue – never swung their way.

Such was the enormity of the context of this one contest, that its result eventually impacted the fortunes of four teams in the tournament. As it stands now, New Zealand are almost through to the semifinals, and Pakistan and Afghanistan are almost out. All this while Sri Lanka have their hopes of qualifying for the 2025 Champions Trophy in the hands of four other teams who will be competing over the next couple of days.

There have been better days in Sri Lankan cricket, and there will be many more better days in the future. But Thursday wasn’t one of those. It was, if anything, a disappointing culmination of a forgettable tournament that was far removed from the performances of the same team a couple of months ago. At the moment, head coach Chris Silverwood isn’t in a position to reflect on the team’s performance at the World Cup. He was hesitant to even open up about the possible positive takeaways from it.

“We have to let the emotions settle at the moment, we have to dissect this,” Silverwood said following Sri Lanka’s loss against New Zealand in their last league game of the tournament. “We have to have a very good debrief and dig deep into what has worked and what hasn’t worked and then try and plan that way forward obviously for the next cycle.

“They’re the positives that we need to take from this now, is how do we best prepare the boys and the generations that are coming through to actually compete in the next World Cup and make sure that come that World Cup, we are competing and we’re ready.”

At the Asia Cup, in home conditions, they seemed to have had most of their bases covered despite the absence of a few key players. While injuries, the turmoil in the board, the captain leaving the team mid-way and the Timed Out controversy would’ve likely played a part in impacting the team in India, their on-field performances left a lot wanting.

Skills-wise, Sri Lanka are far from the team that turned up for the World Cup, as evidenced by their Asia Cup performance where they reached the final. Silverwood pinned the poor performance down to ‘inconsistency’.

“I think it would be fair to use that word.”

He further added, “We’ve played some good cricket along the way, and I think we’ll look back on certain games and rue missed opportunities, to be honest. There have been certain games during this campaign that if we’d have taken the opportunities that were put our way, this could have looked a lot different. But the fact is that we have been inconsistent and it’s something that we’ve been working on for a long time and something we need to continue working on. So, yeah, I think inconsistent is a word we can use.”

To begin with, their strength – the spin attack – was blunted, eventually ending the tournament with the worst returns among all teams. While Wanindu Hasaranga’s injury would’ve played a part, Maheesh Theekshana, Dushan Hemantha and Dunith Wellalage – to go with the part-time options of Charith Asalanka and Dhananjaya de Silva – couldn’t pose enough of a threat.

Theekshana, who had picked 31 wickets in 15 games at an average of 17.45 in 2023, ended up picking only six wickets at an average of 63.66 in the World Cup. Dunith Wellalage, who had emerged as the breakthrough young star in the Asia Cup, picked up only two wickets at an average of 98 in India.

On the batting front, while Sadeera Samarawickrama and Pathum Nissanka had a fairly successful tournament, the team rarely clicked as a unit. The second opener’s slot was never sealed, and their in-form batter Kusal Mendis fizzled after starting with a century and a fifty in. Angelo Mathews, who joined the team mid-way, couldn’t give its batting a facelift.

Silverwood admitted that there is a long-term issue to fix with respect to the collapse of the batters. “It’s happened a couple of times now, a few times,” he admitted. “And it’s something that certainly during the debrief, when we get back and when we dissect what’s happened in this tournament, it’s something that we have to look at and we have to find some answers because clearly, we need to start putting runs on the board on good wickets and putting other teams under pressure. And we haven’t done that.”

Fielding remained a major concern, with as many as 10 catches dropped in the tournament. Even as the fielding coach Anton Roux believes seven of those were half chances missed, even as it’s unlikely that more successful teams have afforded to let go of those opportunities.

Silverwood wasn’t defending the fielding effort of his team and said, “It’s frustrating because certain catches that we’ve put down during this tournament have cost us heavily. It’s again something that we’re constantly working on. Our fielding coach is constantly working on that and trying to obviously push the standards higher. But clearly, there’s still work to be done as well. We are getting ourselves in positions where there’s more catches coming our way. We’ve been brave and going for half chances more, but clearly, we have to start hanging on to these if we want to start turning games in our favour.”

It’s been a collapse on all fronts. Sri Lanka came up second best in all aspects of the game for long periods of their time on the field. Now languishing second last on the points table – a reflection of their performance at the World Cup more than the available skill – they would hope that the only option going ahead after the World Cup is to go up, for the gloomy clouds to make way for the sun. Much like it did figuratively, and unexpectedly, at Chinnaswamy on Thursday.

(Cricbuzz)