For quite some time now, we have been dealing with too many negative reports with regards to Sri Lankan cricket and finally there’s something to smile about when you realize that the national cricket team could move up to number three in official ICC Rankings.
For this to happen, Sri Lanka need to be on top of their game and whitewash England 3-0 in the upcoming three match Test series starting next week in Galle.
Rangana Herath to quit in Galle
Captain Dinesh Chandimal will have the services of veteran spinner Rangana Herath only for the first Test match…
England have been poor travelers in recent times and their last win away from home came more than two years ago in Chittagong when they beat Bangladesh by 22 runs. Since then, they have played 13 games overseas and have not won any. Among those 13 games, there are ten defeats and just three draws. Of those ten losses five have been by an innings. That virtually sums up England’s predicament away from home. Their form in white ball cricket and red ball cricket in recent times have been at two extremes.
To make matters worse, England will be without their best player in Asia – Alastair Cook, who retired at the end of this summer. Of Cook’s 33 Test hundreds, nine were recorded in Asia and in our part of the world he performed far better than in his own conditions. In Asia the former England captain averaged 53, significantly higher than his career average of 45. Cook’s finest hour in Sri Lanka came in 2007 in Galle. The tourists were following on and the opener’s six-hour vigil helped them save the Test.
Read: A tale of two teams
Given the fate that Australia and South Africa suffered in Sri Lanka in the last two years, things don’t look too cozy for England and their wretched record away from home could continue on this tour as well.
Among the world’s top ten batsmen are two Sri Lankans with Dimuth Karunaratne ranked seventh and Dinesh Chandimal ranked eighth. Both players crossed the 1000 run mark last year, the first time since Kumar Sangakkara retired. Rangana Herath also features among the top ten bowlers. Test cricket is the only format Sri Lankans are ranked among the top ten players and you could see the likes of Karunaratne and Chandimal making upward movements given the fact that both Steve Smith and David Warner will fall off the radar owing to their suspension.
Spin will be a key weapon this time like it was during the South Africa and Australian series. So it should be. The last time Sri Lanka toured England in 2016 the Test matches were played on green tops in extreme cold in the northern-most English cricket centers like Chester-le-Street and Headingley. Journalists covering the series remember how the Sri Lankan team turned up for training at Chester-le-Street at two degrees Celsius and some of them could not hold the bat as it was freezing cold.
Read: When Sri Lanka brought England to their knees
Now it’s Sri Lanka’s turn to give the tourists a taste of their own medicine by preparing wickets that will turn square and let the quartet of spinners do the rest. The hosts will miss Herath after the Galle Test. The left-arm spinner was a champion at playing mind games and setting up batsmen. It has been an absolute treat to watch him work out batsmen. He would first give the unsuspecting batsmen a false sense of assurance that all bases are covered and then out of the blues will come up with something that the batters are not adept enough to handle.
Dean Elgar, the South African opener was complaining after the Test series in Sri Lanka two months ago that the whole tour he didn’t face a single ball of seam. Rory Burns and Keaton Jennings might as well prepare for something similar.
England’s spin attack that comprises Adil Rashid, Moeen Ali, Jack Leach and part-time Joe Denly looks good on paper. But both Adil and Moeen are good one-day players and you tend to get the feeling that they will struggle in longer format. Adil averages 35 in First Class cricket and Moeen 39 and that tells you the story.
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Leach, however, is a different kettle of fish. The left-arm spinner had a good season for Somerset finishing with 30 wickets at an average of 24. More importantly Taunton seemed to have prepared wickets that will suit their spinner and Leach was a handful. This season Somerset finished second in the points table in the top division just behind Surrey. Leach played a key role in their success.
Somerset depended so heavily on their left-arm spinner that during some games Leach opened bowling for them as was the case with Lancashire. In that game he finished with career best figures of 12 for 102. His efforts unfortunately could not help Somerset win the game. It was a tie!
