There is officially a traffic jam in the WPL points tale.  A day after RCB qualified for the playoffs, Delhi Capitals (DC) captain Jemimah Rodrigues  led her team over the line in a tense and hard-fought chase to extend Mumbai Indians’ (MI) losing streak to three games in a row. That means all four teams apart from  RCB now have four points each after DC lifted themselves off the bottom to push Gujarat Giants down to fifth.

Chasing 155 on a slow Vadodara track, DC saw Rodrigues walk out needing 71 off 58 balls. The MI bowlers then dried up the boundaries by taking the pace off on a pitch keeping a little low as well and forced Rodrigues and Laura Wolvaardt to mostly trade in singles and doubles. Rodrigues, however, kept finding the boundaries – square and behind square – to bring the equation down to a more comfortable 27 from 18. She placed the ball in the gaps for three more boundaries before Marizanne Kapp  smoked a six to seal victory with an over to spare.

MI were earlier restricted after another slow powerplay with the bat. Once the openers failed again, Nat Sciver Brunt did the heavy lifting once more with an unbeaten 65 after Harmanpreet Kaur fell for 41, as Shree Charani’s 3 for 33 dented MI while they looked to press the pedal. But the total wasn’t enough as almost all DC batters got going and Rodrigues scored her maiden fifty of the season and as WPL captain.

ICC Youth World Cup

Sri Lanka cemented the top spot of Group A points table with a crushing win over Ireland in their second match of the ICC Youth World Cup in Windhoek on Monday.‎The team led by Vimath Dinsara have the heighest net run rate (3.09) of the tournament following their 106 runs victory.

‎While Sri Lanka lead Group A with two wins followed by Australia, who have played only one match, India (Group B), England (Group C) and Afghanistan (Group D) are the leading teams in the other Groups after having won two matches each.

‎Mahanama College all-rounder Dulnith Sigera and Lyceum International speedster Rasith Nimsara were mainly responsible for the distruction as they shared seven wickets between them to restrict Ireland to 161 runs. Sigera completed notable figures of 4.1-0-19-4, while Nimsara ended up with three wickets.

‎Earlier, after the in-form openers were dismissed cheaply skipper Vimath Dinsara held the middle order together with a top score of 95 runs for Sri Lanka to post 267 for five wickets.

‎Ireland’s new ball bowlers dismissed Dimantha Mahavithana and Viran Chamuditha for one digit scores after Sri Lanka decided to bat first. The Sri Lankan openers had posted a record breaking first wicket stand against Japan in their first World Cup encounter at the same venue two days earlier.

‎Sri Lanka were 59 for three wickets when Royal College batsman Dinsara joined Kavija Gamage to steady the innings with a stand of 80 runs. While Kingswood batsman made 49 before being run out, Dinsara went on to add another hundred runs partnership with Mahanama batsman Chamika Heenatigala.

‎Dinsara was dismissed five runs short of the three figure mark in the 46th over.

‎Heenatigala remained unbeaten to post 51 in 53 balls.

‎Dinsara’s knock which came in 102 balls included six fours and a six.

‎For Ireland Oliver Riley took two wickets.

Indications are that Sri Lanka will head into the T20 World Cup without Kusal Janith Perera and that decision may well draw the curtains on his international career. KJP turns 36 in August and if he chooses to walk off into the sunset soon, few will be shocked.

But is this really the right call? The selectors, the only voices that matter, clearly think so. A sizeable chunk of the public, however, remains unconvinced.

At his best, KJP is as clean a striker as you’ll find, a batsman who clears the front leg and goes over the top rather than nudging for singles. That high-octane approach comes with baggage: live by the sword, die by it. Low scores arrive more often than he’d like. Yet the flip side is priceless, he can win games single-handedly. Only last year he smashed a T20I hundred in New Zealand, a feat achieved by just three other Sri Lankans. That alone puts him in rare air.

Yes, the runs dried up after that purple patch. But when the pressure cooker is on and the margins are razor thin, players with big-match temperament are worth their weight in gold.

What makes the decision harder to swallow is the replacement. If KJP had been swapped for a bottom-hand heavy batter built for the death overs, the logic might hold. Instead, he has made way for a top-hand operator in Dhananjaya de Silva, a square peg for a round hole in the shortest format.

Sri Lanka, uniquely, seem determined to juggle three captains across formats and then squeeze all three into the T20 side. That thinking, to put it mildly, is flawed. Balance goes out the window, roles blur and the team ends up batting with the handbrake half on.

The bigger question is timing. Why press the panic button with the World Cup at the doorstep? This Dhananjaya de Silva experiment has been tried before and found wanting. Reheating yesterday’s leftovers on the game’s biggest stage feels like tempting fate.

Little wonder Sri Lanka have become a laughing stock. Cast your mind back to the 2019 World Cup, when England captain Eoin Morgan delivered a barb that still stings. Asked if Jofra Archer was the tournament’s surprise package, Morgan replied, “I think Sri Lanka are the surprise package.”

“I’ve been playing international cricket for over a decade,” he added, “and I’ve never come across some of these guys.”History, it seems, is in danger of repeating itself.

by Rex Clementine ✍️