Rex Clementine
in Galle

At a time when teams were favouring wicketkeepers who could significantly contribute with the bat in Test match cricket, Sri Lanka reversed the trend when Ashantha de Mel took the wicket keeping gloves off Kumar Sangakkara and handed it to Prasanna Jayawardene in 2006. By no means it was a popular decision then. The Chairman of Selectors bore the brunt of criticism. It took some time for results to come and then you realized that de Mel in fact had killed two birds with one stone.

By concentrating on his batting alone, Sanga was able to go onto become world’s number one ranked batsman. On the other hand, the talent of Prasaanna, probably the best wicketkeeper the nation has produced didn’t go waste. De Mel just didn’t let Prasanna sit on his laurels. He kept challenging him to improve his batting and Prasanna ended up with four Test hundreds, three of them away from home. He was in fact Player of the Series when Sri Lanka toured England in 2011. This was at a time when the team had other accomplished batters like Sanga, Mahela Jayawardene, T.M. Dilshan and Thilan Samaraweera.

Men like de Mel who are prepared to take hard, unpopular but far sighted decisions are rare.

Lead up to the Test series against Pakistan, Sri Lanka’s current selectors have a tough choice to make. Are they going to persevere with Niroshan Dickwella or are they going to bite the bullet and accept the fact that eight years of investment on their wicketkeeper has not yielded the desired results.

There’s no harm in selectors giving the long rope to a young player with the hope that he will turn things around. You just hope that they had done the same with Charith Asalanka, who has hit a purple patch in one-day cricket but can’t find a place in the Test team.

Dickwella’s case is an interesting one. Having played 50 Test matches, he has not scored a Test hundred as yet. But he has cemented his place in the side as most seem to agree that he is the best stumper in the country. But on day one of the second Test against Australia he was sloppy.

Marnus Labuschagne was on 28 when Dickwella missed a stumping chance and he went onto post a hundred. It was his first Test hundred overseas and he certainly owed Dickwella a thank you card for the milestone. It was also the first Test hundred by an Australian in Galle since Darren Lehmann had posted a century in 2004. Since then Australia had played three Tests in Galle and although they had won two of those Tests, none had scored a hundred.

Dickwella missed another stumping with Cameroon Green on one and although that did not cost the side dearly, throughout the first day’s play it was obvious that Dickwella was not collecting the ball cleanly. You wonder whether he is losing the edge.

The selectors wanted to send a message and when the team went to Bangladesh, they had added Kamil Mishara as back up keeper. But the young stumper cooked his goose and was sent home on disciplinary grounds. If Dickwella is axed for the Pakistan series, it remains to be seen which direction the selectors will go. There’s obviously Dinesh Chandimal, whose keeping is tidy. If the selectors think that they need someone younger looking at the future, they can do something what they have done frequently in recent times; to see who is keeping wickets at SSC! Krishan Sanjula is not a bad bet after all.