Cocky boasting is part of international sport. Even the greatest sporting icons have done it and paid the price. Cricket documentary ‘Fire in Babylon’ is a superb work.
It centers around one comment, an ill timed one at that. England captain Tony Greig in a BBC interview says that he intends to make West Indies ‘grovel’. Opposition captain Clive Lloyd needs little to say to motivate his team at the height of apartheid. He just says, ‘The big man in television has said it all. Let’s show him.’
The West Indies were fired up. They played out of their skins in that series in 1976 and went onto dominate the sport for a decade.
Dutch captain Pieter Seelaar may have done a Tony Greig in firing up the Sri Lankans with his comments 72 hours before the commencement of the ICC T-20 World Cup. Sri Lanka have blown hot and cold in recent times in white ball cricket resulting in them being forced to play a qualifying round alongside teams like Netherlands, Ireland and Namibia. But surely a team that won the event seven years ago needs to be given more respect.
“I wouldn’t say Sri Lanka is definitely going to go through because they are going to have a hard time beating all three of us,” were Seelaar’s comments.
These words will surely fire up Dasun Shanaka’s boys. Sometimes when not so complementary things are said to you, some players lose the plot. They try to bounce batsmen out or bowl one too many at the body. That could backfire. The important thing is to say very little, do your basics right and to have that extra bit of motivation when faced with the crunch situation.
The Dutch have a history of shooting from the hip. They were overestimating themselves during the 1996 World Cup. In fact, their coach Tony Opatha, the former Sri Lanka cricketer went on record saying that the Dutch would have beaten Sri Lanka if they were in the same group. That comment did not go down well with the Sri Lankans and some players even stopped talking to Opatha. They went onto become champions while the Dutch made a first round exit, having lost all games including to UAE.
A proper analysis of the Sri Lankan and Dutch squads will actually give you a scare. The Dutch side has more experience than the Sri Lankans. So they should not be taken lightly.
T20 is such an uncertain format. If you let things slip for one over, it would be too hard to catch up. Still, Sri Lanka should go through to the second round with an unbeaten record despite them being thin on experience, carrying quite a few players who haven’t featured in at least ten T-20 Internationals. Their preparation, however, has been intense and the slow tracks of UAE will be to their liking.
Everyone seems to find fault with the batsmen’s inability to hit boundaries. Yes, that’s a concern, but even more worrying is how many dot balls Sri Lankans are giving away. The dot ball count is way too high. Once the opposition’s bowling has quality, it is paramount in T20 cricket to rotate the strike and the options batters end up taking are appalling.
The batters are simply unable to play the sweep shot. Time was when the sweep was our players’ staple diet. You don’t have many Sri Lankans who have reverse swept so well but quite a few of them executed the conventional shot improvising it to a paddle sweep. With the presence of Mahela Jayawardene in the set up hopefully this issue has been addressed although we should not expect miracles as he has had very little time with the team.
You tend to get the feeling that Maheesh Theekshana could be the surprise package during the 1st round as opponents are not too sure what to expect from him. The Proteas were all at sea when they first encountered him and he could win you a game or two during the World Cup.
There is lot of debate that Avishka Fernando should be confined to his new role at number four. Well, traditionally what Sri Lankans have done is to move their best batsmen up the order and not the other way around. Avishka should open for many reasons. One key point is that Sri Lanka will be better off him top of the order when Power Play is on. You have got too many blokes who have reputations as finishers. What you lack is a solid middle order batsman and Avishka is not the man to do that job.
*Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of ThePapare.com.
