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Are the selectors scared of Bhanuka Rajapaksa? 

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by Rex Clementine

With sheer pace and skill Kagiso Rabada cut the big talking Bhanuka Rajapaksa to size. Bhanuka had made us all believe that the entire cricketing fraternity was against him and that he wasn’t getting a fair deal. Bhanuka can not walk the talk. The whole nation watched it live. Mickey Arthur  was spot on in assessing him. Bhanuka is a lazy, overhyped; sloppy cricketer who is not just had troubles with the Sri Lankan team management but even his own club; BRC.

In this series against South Africa Bhanuka got three ducks in a row. He should have been axed but the selectors persevered with him.

Well, you can understand the selectors’ dilemma. Bhanuka has met their fitness criteria, he is one of the few players who can clear the boundary and more importantly he has a powerful social media network. So the selectors have all the reasons to be scared of him and preserve with him.

But at the same time what wrong has Avishka Fernando done? For Bhanuka to be continued after scoring three successive ducks and Avishka to be axed three innings after he had scored a hundred doesn’t make sense. Bhanuka will turn 30 next month. Avishka is 23. He certainly is the future. You are willing to give the long rope to Bhanuka, but you are not prepared to do the same to Avishka.

Then there is this ridiculous argument put across that Avishka’s numbers in T-20 cricket are not that spectacular although he has done exceptionally well in ODIs. Is that so? Then how come you give Bhanuka a place in the ODI side having initially brought him to the T-20 team? There can be only two reasons. Either the selectors are scared of Bhanuka or they have got no clue.

When Pramodaya Wickramasinghe axed a whole bunch of seniors promising to rebuild he created the image of a tough guy who will not take any nonsense. Four months later, he has been taken for a ride by an average First Class cricketer who can not pass a simple  fitness test on the first time.

The press has so many questions to ask Pramodaya, but he has avoided the media like the plague. If you think that in these days of the pandemic there’s no room for media briefings, let us tell you that SLC has a vibrant media unit that has conducted over 100 media briefings virtually since the pandemic restricted movements.

Pramodaya has to come out and explain his policies. At the moment it looks as if the he is groping in the dark.

For the last World Cup in the UK, we entered uncharted territories rather than going with the flow. Swimming against the current seems to be the trend in our backyard as we fielded half a dozen players who had at least not played an ODI in more than a year. Remember Eoin Morgan’s tongue in cheek comment that Sri Lanka were the surprises package in the World Cup. You reckon something similar is in store this time around too. Teams put out their best outfits for World Cups after years of planning. Sri Lanka are taking a bunch of rookies. Half of the team picked for the World Cup have played less than a handful of T-20 Internationals and that is recipe for disaster.

Dimuth Karunaratne was one guy who was doing a decent job as one-day captain. What was the mighty hurry in sacking him? What wrong had he done?  Then you get someone who has not even captained his school to lead the side. The trial with Kusal Perera lasted just one month. Then the job is handed to Dasun Shanka who is not sure of his place in the ODI side. The selectors have run out of options.  There are no more leaders to be given the job.  The game is at its lowest ebb.

We can not afford to have a bunch of amateurs doing selections. We need professionals and people who are well respected in the game to do one of sport’s toughest tasks.



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Why the delay? Sri Lanka puzzled over timing of Kuhnemann’s action report

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Matthew Kuhnemann's action was reported to be suspect. [Cricbuzz]

Multiple senior Sri Lankan players had raised concerns over Matthew Kuhnemann’s bowling action after the first Test, Cricbuzz has learnt, with many in the team now left puzzled over why the match officials waited until the end of the series to report the Australian left-arm spinner. According to sources within the team, a couple of them in particular had indicated having found something “not quite right” about the way Kuhnemann was finishing his action while he starred in the first Test win with nine wickets in Galle.

This comes in the wake of the 28-year-old’s action being officially reported by the ICC with its legality now under scrutiny. Kuhnemann, who finished on top of the wicket-takers’ list with 16 wickets at 17.18, will now have to undergo independent testing within the next two weeks to be cleared to bowl again in international cricket.

However, some of the Sri Lankan batters seem to have had an issue with it as early as the latter part of the opening Test. With one of them even having approached Sri Lankan spin bowling coach Piyal Wijetunge to watch replays and analyse Kuhnemann’s action. It’s learnt that Wijetunge couldn’t find anything untoward with it and put the batter’s doubts down to the unique ‘wrist action’ used by the Aussie finger spinner.

The Sri Lankan batter in question and some of his colleagues though weren’t convinced by the spin bowling coach’s explanation and continued to raise eyebrows over some of Kuhnemann’s deliveries as the series progressed.

“They were finding it difficult to leave the crease against him, because they felt like he could adjust and make changes very late, which they found unusual. It’s not like they were questioning his action after every delivery but there were some balls which they were concerned with,” the source told Cricbuzz.

For the record, a number of Sri Lankan batters did succumb to Kuhnemann while trying to play him from their crease.

Kuhnemann is no stranger to Sri Lanka having made his ODI debut here in 2022, and then having gone on to make an impression in his maiden Test series in India the following year. And this is the first time during his eight-year professional cricket career that his action has been officially questioned. A source did admit that the Sri Lankans had not found anything out of place when they were studying Kuhnemann’s bowling videos as part of their preparation for the Test series. That it was only after they saw him bowl during the first Test in Galle that alarms were raised.

“Our focus was more on Nathan Lyon and the damage that he could cause in Galle. But we did watch a lot of Kuhnemann’s videos from his past performances, and nothing really caught our eye. There were a few deliveries through the series though that didn’t quite feel right,” revealed one of the batters.

“What we don’t understand is why the match officials, who were the same for both Tests, waited until the series was over before reporting his action,” he added.

None of this of course has any bearing on how Australia deal with the situation, with Kuhnemann’s immediate future as a bowler in international cricketer dependent on the outcome of the testing conducted by the human-movement specialist in the next two weeks.

Interestingly, the Sri Lankan spin coach’s assessment, like learnt, seemed to be along the lines of how former ace Indian spinner R Ashwin had broken down Kuhnemann’s action a couple of years ago on his YouTube show.

Ashwin had highlighted the uniqueness of the left-armer’s wrist in its loading position and why it could create an optical illusion of there being an elaborate “elbow extension”, which according to the laws of the game cannot be over 15 degrees.

“The way his wrist breaks, it will look at times like an elbow extension. But there’s nothing like that in his action. It’s more the wrist involvement,” Ashwin had said.

Cricket Australia have thrown their support behind the Queenslander, who now plies his trade in Tasmania, and will work through the process, which will involve Kuhnemann bowling at similar speeds and with similar revolutions on the ball as he would have during the second Test. The results will then show if there is an elbow extension beyond the legal 15 degrees in order to deem whether his action is legal or not in its current form.

It’s learnt that Sri Lankan cricket will wait until the results are made public before making any further statements about the issue regarding Kuhnemann’s bowling action.

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Grant Fisher smashes world indoor 5000m record in Boston

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Less than a week after he took apart the world indoor 3000m record in New York, USA’s Grant Fisher added another world indoor record* to his tally, this time over 5000m at the BU David Hemery Valentine International in Boston on Friday (14).

The double Olympic bronze medallist dropped Jimmy Gressier just after the half way point and continued to extend his lead throughout the second half. After passing 3000m in 7:39.16 – a comfortable 16 seconds outside the world indoor record of 7:22.91 he clocked last Saturday – Fisher continued to churn out sub-31-second laps.

After covering the final 400m in 59.36 seconds, Fisher charged through the line in 12:44.09, a five-second improvement on the previous world indoor record of 12:49.60 set by Kenenisa Bekele in 2004.

Gressier held on for second place in 12:54.92, a European indoor record and outright French record.

[*Subject to the usual ratification procedure]

[World Athletics]

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Ostapenko hands Swiatek heavy loss to reach Qatar final

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Iga Swiatek hit just eight winners compared to 31 by Jelena Ostapenko [BBC]

Iga Swiatek suffered her worst defeat in two years as Jelena Ostapenko breezed past the world number two in straight sets to reach the Qatar Open final.

Ostapenko needed just and hour and eight minutes to wrap up a 6-3 6-1 victory over the five-time Grand Slam champion in Doha.

The last time Swiatek was on the wrong end of such a one-sided match was a 6-2 6-2 loss to Elena Rybakina at Indian Wells in March 2023.

The 23-year-old Pole was on a 15-match winning streak at the Qatar Open and chasing a fourth successive title.

Ostapenko, ranked 37th in the world, has now won all five of her meetings with Swiatek.

“I feel like this court has a special energy,” said the Latvian, 27.

“I was pretty confident that I would beat her because we’ve played a lot of matches and I kind of know how to play against her.

“I’m really happy with the way I’m handling my emotions this week. I’m just so happy to be in the final.”

Ostapenko will play Amanda Anisimova in today’s final after the American beat Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova 6-3 6-3.

[BBC Sports]

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