Sports
Twenty-five years on from Sri Lanka’s most acrimonious tour
By Rex Clementine
Australia’s support to develop and nurture the game of cricket in Sri Lanka is unparalleled. From voting in favour of granting Sri Lanka Test status in 1981 to donating US$ 100,000 so that the board could afford a qualified foreign coach in 1994, the Australian Cricket Board has been a pillar of strength to us. But Arjuna Ranatunga’s side’s tour of Australia in 1995 was a bitter pill to swallow. Twenty-five years later, many admit that this tour was the one that transformed Sri Lankan cricket – from also-rans to fierce competitors.
Leading television personality Brian Thomas once asked Steve Waugh about sledging as his side was notorious for what they called ‘mental disintegration’ of the opposition. Waugh’s reply was interesting. He said, “Arjuna Ranatunga is the biggest sledger in the world. One Ranatunga is equal to 11 Australians.”
The 1995 tour brought out the ugly side of Australians. The Sri Lankans responded with uglier stuff and players of both sides remained at daggers drawn for years. It is the tradition in Australia that the losing side visits the winners for a beer after a game. That protocol was breached. Sri Lankans didn’t buy into the argument that you play hard on the field but cooled things off at stumps. They took the Aussies head on.
There were controversies – plenty of them. During the opening Test in Perth, the tourists were accused of ball tampering. But later they were exonerated. Then in the second Test at MCG, Murali was no balled for throwing. There were some 55,000 fans witnessing the Boxing Day encounter and later it emerged that some officials of the Australian board were aware that the spinner was going to get a public humiliation. But the greatest thing about Australians is that they owe up to their mistakes. Of all people, Steve Waugh in his autobiography ‘Never Satisfied’ admits that it shouldn’t have happened.
Then there was horrendous umpiring and many felt Sri Lankans were hard done by. The other great attribute about Aussies is that they call a spade a spade. Former captains Richie Benaud and Ian Chappell in commentary didn’t mince any words about the standards of umpiring.
Amidst the chaos, the competitive nature of the Sri Lankans was almost forgotten. Their bowling was one dimensional those days and was not able to take 20 wickets. Batting, however, was classy.
Hashan Tillakaratne posted a hundred in the opening Test. To date, he is the only Sri Lankan to have scored a hundred in Perth, considered the fastest wicket in the world. Asanka Gurusinha came up with a back to the wall hundred at MCG in the Boxing Day Test. The tour also proved to be the arrival of Sanath Jayasuriya as a Test match opener following his century at the Adelaide Oval.
It was quite a formidable attack too with Glen McGrath and Shane Warne in their prime and Sri Lankans returned home with their heads held high, something that you don’t find happening too often when going down under.
Aravinda de Silva was a disappointment. Much was expected of him and the way the Aussies celebrated his dismissal each time gave you an indication how much they valued his wicket. In six innings, he managed only 98 runs with a highest score of 28.
Aravinda did finish up as the highest run getter for the team in the tri-nation competition that took place simultaneously along the Test series. But the team expected much more from him.
West Indies were the third team in the tri-nation competition and they were quite a strong force at that stage. To their credit, the Sri Lankans defeated West Indies and qualified for the finals.
The tour ended late January and the World Cup was just two weeks away. This outing had toughened up the Sri Lankans like any tour of Australia would do.
After Sri Lanka qualified for the finals of the 1996 World Cup, Arjuna was asked which opposition he would prefer in the final. He said, bring on the Aussies. Not many teams wanted to play the Aussies in a World Cup final at that stage. But the Sri Lankans were up for it. And the rest as they say is history.
The winners of the Woorld Test Championship [WTC] final, to be played between South Africa and Australia at Lord’s starting June 11, will secure a prize money of USD 3.6 million, more than double of the winners in the last two cycles. The runners-up, meanwhile, will bag more than USD 2.1 million, while the prize for the same in the previous editions was USD 800,000.
The winners in the last two cycles — New Zealand and Australia — had earned USD 1.6 million each.
“The increase in prize money exhibits the ICC’s efforts to prioritize Test cricket as it looks to build on the momentum of the first three cycles of the nine-team competition,” the ICC said in its release.
India, who finished third on the table, will receive over USD 1.4 million, while fourth-placed New Zealand get USD 1.2 million. Even the prize money for teams finishing fifth (USD 960000) and sixth (USD 840000) — England and Sri Lanka — is more than what it was for the runners-up in the previous editions.
South Africa topped the table in the 2023-25 edition with eight wins from 12 games, and were the first team to seal a final spot with a dramatic two-wicket win over Pakistan. Defending champions Australia got through by pipping India to the second spot after winning the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 3-1 at home.
Both teams have named their squads for the final. The focus for South Africa will be on their pace spearhead Kagiso Rabada after his one-month ban for failing a drug test, while Cameron Green makes his return to Australia’s Test side after undergoing a lower spine surgery last year.
Sri Lanka wicketkeeper-batter Kusal Mendis will replace Jos Buttler in the Gujarat Titans squad for the IPL 2025 playoffs.
Kusal Mendis had been at the Pakistan Super League (PSL) with Quetta Gladiators until last week, playing as their wicketkeeper-batter. He’d last played for them on May 7. But ESPNcricinfo has learned he will not travel to Pakistan for the remainder of the PSL due to perceived safety concerns, and has now pivoted to playing in the IPL, a league in which he has never previously appeared.
Buttler’s unavailability for the playoffs is down to his having been named in England’s ODI squad for the home series against West Indies, which starts on May 29. The IPL’s playoffs begin the same day.
GT have two other wicketkeeping options in their squad, in Anuj Rawat and Kumar Kushagra. However, Kusal Mendis has been in good form for Gladiators, hitting 143 runs at a strike rate of 168 in five PSL matches.
Merely being approached by an IPL franchise as a replacement is something of a career fillip for Kusal Mendis, who had entered his name in the IPL auctions repeatedly, but had never been bought. He is understood to be currently awaiting his India visa, and is likely to join the GT squad on Saturday.
GT currently sit atop the IPL table, equal on points with Royal Challengers Bengaluru, but with a better net run rate. They need only one more win to confirm their place in the playoffs.
[Cricinfo]
Cricket West Indies (CWI) has implored the ICC to provide a fair and transparent pathway for at least one of the Caribbean’s sovereign nations to represent West indies at the Los Angeles Olympics.
The heart of the problem here is that while in cricket many countries compete under the name the West Indies are administered by the same cricket board (CWI), the Olympics only allows sovereign nations to contest. There can be no team in which for instance, Barbadans, Jamaicans, Trinidadians, Guyanese, St. Lucians play in the same team, even though that is how regular cricket is organised.
So in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, an event in which six nations will compete in cricket, the region hopes to have at least one of its sovereign states in play. Currently, West Indies women are ranked sixth on the T20I ICC rankings, and the men are fifth. West Indies men have won the T20 World Cup twice, and the women once. It is up to the ICC to nominate the teams that will participate in the Olympics.
There is also the additional complication that the United States, as the host nation of these Olympics, may be a frontrunner to gain automatic qualification despite their low rankings, though that has not been confirmed by the ICC. This means only five further spots are available.
“The Caribbean has always punched above its weight at the Olympics, inspiring the world with our athletic brilliance,” CWI president Kishore Swallow said. “Cricket’s return to the Games in 2028 must not exclude our young cricketers from the same dream that has inspired our athletes. The Olympic Charter emphasizes fairness, transparency, and universality. We are simply asking that these principles be upheld–not just in spirit, but in structure. West Indies cricket must have a pathway, and fully deserves an opportunity to compete.”
CWI has provided the ICC with two possible ways forward. To quote from the CWI release:
- If rankings are used and West Indies men and women teams technically qualify, an internal qualifying tournament among its Olympic affiliated member countries will determine which country represents the West Indies; or
- A global qualifying pathway that includes associate ICC members in the five ICC Development Regions plus member countries of the West Indies.
The first of these options would have the CWI, through domestic tournaments, pick their champions for the LA Olympics. The second would involve a more rigorous selection process, in which the sovereign nations that are members of the West Indies board compete alongside a host of other nations for Olympics spots.
What the CWI board stresses to ICC, however, is that qualification criteria must be “fair and transparent”, citing a bylaw in the Olympic Charter. Caribbean nations are accustomed to Olympic success, as several of them are frequently atop Olympics leaderboards for medals per capita. Their collective achievements in track events in particular, are recognised almost universally as extraordinary.
CWI CEO Chris Dehring said: “Our nations have proudly flown their individual flags atop Olympic podiums as perennial gold medalists. Now, with cricket’s inclusion, we must ensure that our cricketers are not shut out of history. We are ready to collaborate. We are ready to compete. But above all, we are asking for fairness.”
The ICC has made no announcement on what the Olympics qualification process will be, so far.
Cricket has only once been played in the Olympics, way back in 1900. On that occasion, France and Great Britain competed, with Great Britan winning the two day match by 158 runs. The highest individual score for France in the second innings was 8.
[Cricinfo]
The development of a country depends on the productive contribution that its people make towards the nation. — Prime Minister
The Prime Minister participated in the 77th commemoration of AL- NAKBA for Palestine.
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