Rex Clementine in Miami

Sri Lanka’s World Cup campaign ended in bitter disappointment even before they departed to the Caribbean island of St. Lucia on Thursday. Their game on Sunday against the Netherlands is a dead rubber, but pride is at stake against the Dutch.

It’s been a campaign filled with hurt and disappointment for a team that had done reasonably well in white ball cricket this year. Sri Lanka simply failed to get going in the World Cup the moment Wanindu Hasaranga won the toss and opted to bat against South Africa.

It has been discussed over and over again how the team set themselves bigger totals and failed to realize that US wickets weren’t going to produce high scoring games.

Another issue that has gone unnoticed is how bowling let the side down. True, bowlers did well to put up a fight defending below par totals, but the 12 wides bowled in the Bangladesh game was costly. Apart from the runs, it obviously means that they sent down two additional overs due to the excessive amount of wides and the second game was lost with an over to spare. Then, obviously, the number of full tosses that were sent down during crucial stages of the game was a bitter pill to swallow.

The team’s strategy of banking on just two quicks didn’t work and perhaps the addition of Dushmantha Chameera may have helped them although the games were lost with batting.

While the selectors expressed confidence that they have enough fire power to clear boundaries, a requirement in T-20 cricket, it was evident that the batters chosen for the 20-nation competition weren’t capable of executing the big hits.

Wanindu Hasaranga had promoted himself up the order and had done quite well in his role as a ‘floater’ but he was a flop during the World Cup picking consecutive ducks.

Hasaranga’s handling game situations too has a lot to be desired, especially his bowling changes. Nuwan Thushar looked to be the most threatening of all bowlers against Bangladesh. The captain instead of holding onto his overs to be used in the death overs exhausted all his four overs and was forced to rely on Dasun Shanaka to send down the penultimate over. The Sri Lankan captain has much to learn from the likes of Rohit Sharma. The Indian captain used Jasprit Bumrah superbly during the epic clash against arch-rivals Pakistan.

When Sri Lanka lost the warm-up game to Netherlands all lead bowlers had been rested. You would expect all of them to be on show for Sunday’s game.

Conditions in St. Lucia might tempt the team to back the two-spin combination, but it will be tough to leave out Chameera after back to back losses. He was expected to play the Nepal game which was rained out in Florida.

Sri Lanka’s players were left stranded in Florida due to the floods. They were expected to fly out from Fort Lauderdale airport on Wednesday evening, but due to torrential rain and subsequent floods they were unable to leave their hotel rooms. They were expected to fly out to St. Lucia at 8:30 pm on Thursday on a chartered flight.

Their luggage had been already dispatched to the airport on Wednesday so the players had to live on the stuff that were there on their hand luggages.St. Lucia is a tiny Caribbean island that has a population of 180,000. The size of St. Lucia is 617 square kilometers but the country has its own Prime Minister and currency; East Caribbean Dollar.

St. Lucia is not a stronghold of West Indian cricket like Barbados, Antigua, Guyana or Trinidad. The only notable cricket from there is former captain Darren Sammy. In fact, the cricket ground in St. Lucia is named after him.