Sports
Kusal Mendis has turned a corner
by Rex Clementine
We are very quick to learn from the big brother. Sri Lanka’s first game of this ICC Cricket World Cup in Delhi was played at Arun Jaitley Stadium, named after their former Finance Minister. Sri Lanka’s last game was played in Hyderabad at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium while their next game in Lucknow will be played at Athal Bihari Vajpayee Stadium, both Prime Ministers of India. The final of the World Cup of course will be played in Ahmedabad at Narendra Modi Stadium, the current PM.
MCG was boasting all this while that they could host 110,000 fans for a game. But now Ahmedabad can host 138,000 fans and it is the world’s biggest stadium. Narendra Modi Stadium will be the place to be on the 19th of November, but the chances of us making there are slim.
We have also named Test cricket grounds after two of our former leaders – R. Premadasa and Mahinda Rajapaksa. India by the way has nine grounds named after Jawaharlal Nehru, their first Prime Minister.
Strange that in our part of the world we don’t name cricket grounds after players. India at least has named stands after their former greats. There is Gautam Gambhir Stand, Bishan Singh Bedi Stand and Mohinder Amarnath Stand in Delhi while Hyderabad has Mohammad Azharuddin and VVS Laxman stands. We also should follow suit and name some stands after our greats. At least we should have a stand named after late Gamini Dissanayake if not a ground after him.
Sunil Gavaskar has a stand in his beloved Bombay. But he doesn’t seem to fancy the idea. The reason being that many people in his hometown think that simply because there’s a stand named after him in Wankhede, he gets free tickets for the game. If that’s the plight of Mr. Gavaskar, one of the true greats of the game, imagine the plight of poor reporters who get bombarded with calls during match days requesting for tickets.
Lucknow where Sri Lanka will play Australia and Netherlands is one of India’s new cricket grounds. Some fans are worried that after Sri Lanka’s poor campaign in the World Cup so far, they might struggle in rest of the games and even the Dutch could expose some of the chink of their armour.
Some others claim that the Dutch were not at full strength during the World Cup qualifiers and with five of their players returning from County Cricket, they will be hard to beat. However, Sri Lanka should cruise past them. If the Australia – South Africa game is any indication, the Lucknow venue is not a patch of Delhi or Hyderabad, which were belters. It is more like Madras and there will be some assistance for spin. Sri Lanka should beat the Dutch and could beat the Aussies as well as conditions are expected to suit them.
The biggest plus point in this World Cup has been the form of Kusal Mendis. The stunning knocks that he made against two good bowling attacks gives you the assurance that this World Cup will mark his journey towards becoming one of the greats of the sport.
Kumar Sangakkara’s batting feats are hard to match leave alone breaking them. On Tuesday, Mendis scored the fastest hundred in World Cups by a Sri Lankan off just 65 balls, five deliveries fewer than Sanga.
From his school days there was little doubt that he was going to be the future of Sri Lankan cricket. There has been the occasional stunner but consistency has been missing. Babar Azam and Kusal Mendis are the same age; 28. Babar is averaging 47 in Tests and 57 in ODIs while Kusal’s average is lingering around 30s.
But becoming a father seems to have helped him to settle down. He’s become more responsible now and rash strokes have been cut down drastically and are only played when he is set.Wicketkeeping has probably helped him too as he sees the ball better. He is also contributing to the team by means of setting fields and these are all good signs.
Still a few doubts remain though. Why he didn’t turn up for the national anthem before the start of the game against South Africa in Delhi and was cramps a good enough reason to be away from the whole fielding innings against Pakistan in Hyderabad pose interesting questions. But we should give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, there is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future!
For over a century, the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) has been the quiet, dignified heartbeat of Sri Lankan cricket. To walk through its gates is to walk through a gallery of greats, and ghosts. This is where Muthiah Muralidaran turned the ball as if by magic, claiming 166 of his 800 Test wickets – a world record for a single venue to date. It is where Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara built their 624 run monument to patience, and where Chaminda Vaas’ 8 for 19 left Zimbabwe in ruins.
But for all the prestige the SSC had as the ‘Lord’s of Sri Lanka,’ the modern game had begun to grow beyond its reach. For years, the ground was a sanctuary for the traditionalist, a place of white kits and long afternoon shadows. One that has fed more players and captains to the national team than any other. But while the world embraced the floodlit frenzy of T20 cricket, the SSC remained a daytime relic.
The last limited-overs international hosted there was a women’s T20I in 2023, while the last men’s white-ball game was an ODI in 2020. Its T20I history, meanwhile, frozen in time, preserved in the memory of Associate clashes between Canada, Ireland, and Afghanistan in the afternoon heat of 2010.
This Saturday, while the sun will still be high over Colombo, the 16-year drought finally ends. As the rumble of the T20 World Cup curtain-raiser between Pakistan and the Netherlands echoes across the ground, six towering sentinels will stand watch over the turf – an LKR. 1.8 billion crown of LED floodlights waiting to signal the club’s belated arrival to the present. The journey to this moment, though, has been long.
“My God, for the last two decades,” exclaimed SSC cricket committee chairman Samantha Dodanwela, his voice carrying the relief of a man who has finally crossed the finish line.
Since 2009, the dream of floodlights was mired in the complexities of a private members’ club – disputes, corporate hesitancy, and protective instincts of a historic membership. It took the backing of Sri Lanka Cricket and the skills of a legal firm to ensure that this modernisation wouldn’t cost the club its soul or autonomy.
The result is a venue that feels both intimate and international. With a capacity of 12,000, it is a ’boutique’ World Cup experience, though a plan for a 6000-seater three-tier stand is already moving from the boardroom to the western hill.
“This venue is in the heart of the city,” Dodanwela noted, eyeing the urban sprawl of Colombo that surrounds the club. “You will see members patronising the club in the evenings; the crowd will always be there.”For Dodanwela, who joined the club in 1990 and took stewardship of its Cricket Committee in 2011 – albeit with a short gap when Jayawardene took over briefly from 2020-22 – the lights are a guarantee of relevance. While the heritage of the SSC is built on the craft of Test cricket, he knows the future is T20.
“The SSC pitch is the best in Sri Lanka. If you are a good bowler, there is life early on. But if you survive? There are loads of runs. And in T20, what we need is runs.”
As the Oman vs Zimbabwe clash kicks off at 3pm on February 9, and Pakistan vs USA plays out fully under lights the following night, the transition will be complete.
The membership may look back fondly on a past defined by Test cricket, but the SSC’s future is set to begin with the glow of flood-lit mayhem in the heart of Colombo.
(Cricinfo)
The Under-19 World Cups come thick and fast: once every two years. Soon enough, most of the players appearing in today’s final will graduate, their cricket limited by franchises and passports rather than age limits. But for now, India and England’s roads at this World Cup finally converge.
Both teams are unbeaten in the tournament so far. England stormed into the final after their captain, Thomas Rew, starred with a 110 that took them to a 27 run victory against defending champions Australia.
India were faced with a tall task of chasing down a record setting 311, against Afghanistan. However, India’s batters – led by a swashbuckling century by opener Aaron George raced to the target with 53 balls and seven wickets to spare, to lay down the marker on a Harare pitch that should continue to have plenty in it for the batters.
India and England have met once in the recent past: they faced off in a warm-up match right before the tournament proper. In the rain interrupted encounter, James Rew starred with a 66-ball 71* to take England home. This time around, there will be plenty more stakes involved for either side. They might as well be facing each other for the first time.
Aaron George was having an underwhelming Under-19 World Cup at the top of the order for India. His scores at the tournament had been 7, 23, and 16 when he came out to bat against Afghanistan. Under the spotlight, though, he put in his most impressive showing of the tournament. He led the chase with poise, being the last wicket to fall with just 11 runs left to knock off. By then, he had peppered the Afghan bowlers around the ground for 15 fours and two sixes during a classy 104-ball 115. He might revel under the spotlight some more in the final.
Thomas Rew has led England from the front in more ways than one. He is the fourth highest run-getter in the tournament, with 299 runs at an average of 74.75 and an equally impressive strike rate of 101.01. His footwork has been a class above his fellow England batters against spin especially, and if the Harare surface decides to spin and bounce, he will be keen to take off from where he left during his century against Australia in the first semi-final.
The Harare Sports Club has served up fast-paced pitches in the tournament so far. The semi-final between India and Afghanistan was a belter in particular, with the ball coming onto the bat and seeing an aggregate of 621 runs scored between both sides at a run rate of 6.81. If the final happens on a similar surface, conditions will favour the batters again.
The weather today [Friday] has a chance of light rain: the match will begin at 9.30am local time; shower and thunder might roll in after 5pm. The temperature will hover around the mid-20s (Celsius) throughout.
[Cricinfo]
The ICC and PCB are engaged in back-channel communications as the global governing body tries to find a way for its showpiece group match at the 2026 T20 World Cup between Pakistan and India to go ahead.
On instructions from their government, Pakistan will not take the field against India in Colombo on February 15, though they will play their other matches. The Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the decision was to show solidarity with Bangladesh, who were excluded from the T20 World Cup because they did not want to play in India, one of the co-hosts along with Sri Lanka.
Though the PCB has not publicly commented on the boycott of the group match against India, the ICC responded to the decision – originally conveyed by the Government of Pakistan on its ‘X’ account – saying it expected the PCB to “explore a mutually acceptable resolution, which protects the interests of all stakeholders.”
That resolution has been the subject of calls and meetings between Imran Khwaja, the ICC deputy chair, and Mubashir Usmani of the Emirates Cricket Board, who is also on the ICC Board. They have been in communication with PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi and Salman Naseer, who is the PSL head but also a senior advisor to Naqvi.
The efforts had begun a week before the boycott was announced, when Naqvi had first raised doubts over Pakistan’s participation in the T20 World Cup and said it would depend on the government. Naqvi travelled to the UAE that week as part of a state visit but is believed to have sought advice from officials there and met Khwaja on that trip. With Khwaja back in Singapore, where he is based, and Naqvi in Pakistan, discussions have since continued.
Initially the PCB was informed of potential sanctions Pakistan could face should they withdraw from the tournament entirely, though its response was that the issue is not about financial consequences. After the decision to exclude Bangladesh was taken, Naqvi criticised it, accusing the ICC of “double standards” and of doing an “injustice” to Bangladesh.
Since the announcement of the boycott, however, contact from the ICC has focused on addressing PCB’s grievances so that the game goes ahead. Khwaja has stepped in as a mediator in other recent disputes involving the PCB, BCCI and the ICC.
[Cricinfo]
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