You don’t see anything extraordinary in Dasun Shanaka’s captaincy. He doesn’t have the tactical brilliance of Mahela, aggressive approach of Arju or smartness of Sanga. So what helps him to click?
A closer look at Dasun Shanaka will tell you that he is cricket’s most selfless guy. Once you are in a leadership role in any walk of life, most of us desperately try to ensure that our future is secure. It’s even more common in cricket where the captain has so much say. What Dasun has done is to go out of his comfort zone and search what’s best for his team. Having put the team ahead of himself, you see that players trusting the captain and when that happens, sky is a limit for a cricket team.
Being selfless is not a quality that we see in many captains these days. That’s why we need to protect Dasun moving forward. He has ended Sri Lanka’s eight-year long drought without a major championship in cricket when his side stunned the world with a five straight wins to be crowned Asian Champions. In their campaign, Shanaka’s side knocked off world’s number one ranked team India and beat number two ranked Pakistan twice. At a time when everyone was of the view that the team that loses a toss in UAE is doomed in a game, Shanaka’s men defied that logic too.
Throughout the Asia Cup we saw brilliant planning paying off like when Virat Kohli’s stumps went cart-wheeling or Babar Azam fell into a trap by flicking one straight into the hands of short-fine-leg. Most of that and others have been done after careful observation and attention to detail.
One of the factors the coaching staff realized was that the batting was playing catch up due to the fact that their finishers like Bhanuka Rajapaksa and Dasun Shanaka were forced to come out to bat early.
So. there’s been some shifting around the batting order. While most teams have chosen a dasher to open the batting, Kusal Mendis has been entrusted with the role as the team management seems to be confident that you can score runs in the Power Play with some proper cricketing shots and you don’t always need to slog.
In the meantime, getting Danushka Gunathilaka to the middle order has been done with the thinking that he’s a good runner between the wickets and when the field is spread, he’d be still able to keep the scoreboard ticking. It was a gamble and it didn’t work during the Asia Cup, but that ploy will be continued in the World Cup as well which means Danushka will retain his place.
Sri Lanka’s batting is split into two groups – the top – which comprises Kusal, Pathum, Danushka and Charith/DDS. The next four, Bhanuka, Dasun, Wanindu and Chamika are supposed to be finishers with their big hitting with Dushmantha Chameera also encouraged to try straight sixes.
Under Chris Silverwood the players had been given the freedom to express themselves and play with flamboyance. You need to be flamboyant in T-20 cricket and sometimes it doesn’t work out like when your key player gets out trying to reverse sweep or the ramp shot. When these backfire, rather than pointing of fingers, it’s assessed where things had gone wrong and players are encouraged to get the execution right and not to keep a stroke in the cold store as was the case in previous years. Basically this has encouraged players to play with more freedom.
Another key factor has been that the players’ fitness have improved remarkably since it was a few years back. This has helped better fielding displays, better running between the wickets, more strength to clear boundaries and above all less injuries. Fitness is something that the team management is not willing to make any negotiations asking players to train hard and look after their food.
Bowling is still Sri Lanka’s strength. They are confident that any decent target will be defended while in the case of bowling first the bowlers will not concede anything that is beyond the reach of batters. There’s lot of excitement with the pace the team is possessing but what about variety with the bowling department having got most bases, except left-arm spin, covered.
The players have been given two weeks off and training will resume on the 20th of September. A week-long camp will be conducted in Kandy before the team leaves for Australia on the 2nd of October. The bigger grounds in Australia pose different challenges and it remains to be seen what strategies the team will employ down under. Their planning in UAE was masterclass. T-20 cricket has changed significantly since Sri Lanka played their first game at the Rose Bowl in 2006. Sri Lankans have contributed to help the change the way the game has been played and expect a couple of innovations during the business end of the tournament in October.
