by Rex Clementine 

Ever wonder why a 19-year-old Asanka Gurusinha made his Test debut as a wicketkeeper in Karachi in 1985? Well, the team’s wicketkeeper Amal Silva had been given clear instructions not to hook, but yet he tried his luck and was dismissed and had hell to pay. The team’s supremo Abu Fuard ran Sri Lankan cricket with an iron fist those days. No one crossed his path. Nobody defied his orders.

Had Abu been living today, on the cricket team’s return to the team hotel after a day-night game at Suriyawewa, he would have told Niroshan Dickwella to get off the team bus in middle of the road. That road is as good as a jungle and wondering around there after nightfall is not the most sensible thing to do. Abu did not treat adults with kids’ gloves. Sink or swim was his theory.

There’ll be those who say that times have changed and Abu’s methods wouldn’t have worked in the modern day. But how else would you get Dickwella to fall in line? After nearly ten years of Test cricket and more than 50 Tests, he’s yet to make a hundred. Only a no nonsense approach will work with him.

Ricky Ponting had an altercation in a nightclub and Cricket Australia came down hard on him. It required Steve Waugh to sit down the young prodigy and to make him realize his potential.

Virat Kohli walked into the big stage at the same time IPL was launched. He went to the franchise owned by showman Vijay Mallaya – Royal Challengers Bangalore. Whether they were winning in cricket or not, off the field RCB were doing it all in grand style. Their after match parties were legendary.

Like in the case of Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar had to take Kohli under his wing and make him realize that he could go onto become world’s best batter if he focused on his cricket.

Dickwella will turn 30 this year. There’s no point of sitting him down now. Even if Viv Richards comes and talks, he’d be in no mood to listen as he lives in his own world reminding us that in the world of blind the one eyed man is king.

The selectors are already giving indications of needing to move on. It’ll be a crime to see Nishan Madushka carrying drinks at the Basin Reserve where the second Test will be played after the prolific year he’s had.

keeping has been flawless. It’s his batting that irritates people. A low full toss had got him trapped leg before wicket in the first innings. To add insult to injury, Dickwella went onto burn a review. If Sri Lanka win the first Test, captain Dimuth Karunaratne will argue that he needs to play the winning team and the captain’s wish should be granted. But you can sense that patience is running thin.

Before the start of the first Test. Dimuth  defended Dickwella. He argued that in Test match cricket you need to have your best keeper on show. Fair point. The captain also went onto touch on Prasanna Jayawardene days. How he had kept other keepers at bay.

There should be no comparison between PJ and Dickwella. PJ is by far one of the best keepers to play the game. Plus, his 58 Tests produced four hundreds and a Player of the Series award in England. His only blemish was turning down the Test captaincy in 2011 at Rose Bowl when Duleep Mendis offered it to him on a platter.

A closer look at the manner in which Dickwella moves about things will also suggest that he’s a team player and which is why Dimuth throws his weight behind him. But the selectors look for only one thing in the end and that’s numbers. Sadly, Dickwella is not covering himself with glory when it comes to numbers. First they axed him from the white ball teams and now they are all out to get rid of him from the Test side and you can’t really find fault with the selectors.  Dickwella was one of the three players who was sent home from England for breaching COVID protocols in 2021. His comeback game was in Mohali. Usually when players come after such bans they have a point to prove and fight it out in the middle. How did Dickwella’s comeback go? Ravindra Jadeja tempted him to sweep with two fielders square of the wicket waiting for the top edge and our man fell into the trap hitting it straight to square leg fielder.

Some say the sweep is Dickwella’s bread and butter. Well, if your staple diet is continuously giving you an upset stomach, you have an easy choice to make. Not Dickwella though.

When Dickwella was about to make it to the senior side, his school coach at Trinity College Sampath Perera predicted a bright future for the lad, but hoped that he maintained his discipline. Perera perhaps knows that the national cricket team is a place of distraction and you need to keep your focus.

Dickwella is an immensely skillful cricketer. He’s able to get under the skin of the opposition, he’s creative and well versed in laws of cricket and plays to win. These are characteristics any captain would love. Ideally, today he should be Dimuth’s understudy. But sadly Dickwella and numbers don’t match up. He’s got to redeem himself in the second innings. Or there will be curtains. It will be a shame. You don’t find many players scooping Kagido Rabada thunderbolts clocked at 150 kmph.