Over the years, several young batting talents have emerged representing the national cricket team having come up with some noteworthy performances away from home. Dinesh Chandimal, Dimuth Karunaratne, Kusal Janith Perera have all done well, but the most impressive has been Lahiru Thirimanne.
You can’t ask for more when Aravinda de Silva handpicks a talent and Kumar Sangakkara confirms it. That’s exactly what happened with Thirimanne. After being overlooked for the Under-19 World Cup a few years ago, Thirimanne was rushed back to the side on the insistence of Aravinda and over the years Sangakkara has heaped praise on the left-hander saying he is destined for grand doings. It’s Thirimanne’s sound technique that has impressed both Aravinda and Sangakkara while lesser greats are excited about his intelligence, team work and temperament.
Good players excel away from home and Thirimanne has a better record outside Sri Lanka. All his three ODI hundreds have come away from home while, of his 11 ODI fifties, eight have been scored overseas in places like Melbourne, Brisbane, Johannesburg, Calcutta, Christchurch, The Oval and Birmingham.
Thirimanne hit a purple patch during the Asia Cup last year where he was Man of the Series and scored a match-winning century in the final against Pakistan. He was an opener then, but soon was utilized in the middle-order and was again shuffled back to the opening slot leading up to the World Cup.
“If you look at my batting style, I feel like I can be more useful at the top of the order. At times I’ve gone down and batted at six – sometimes quite well – but to do that I had to change my technique. At the top of the order, I go back to my basics,” Thirimanne told journalists.
Thirimanne sees being shuffled around the batting line-up as a blessing in disguise.
“The experience of batting low down did a lot of good things for me. When you get only 10 overs to bat down there, you’ve got to play a lot of shots. So you’ve got to start playing ramp shots, paddle sweeps, lofted shots and all. That builds variety into your game,” he added.
Thirimanne eagerly takes up input from stalwarts Mahela Jayawardene and Sangakkara to develop his game. “I haven’t actually made big changes to my technique to adjust to different conditions. There have been small things to change from place to place, of course, but I’ve also had Kumar say, ‘The way you bat, you shouldn’t have to change too much. Keep making small adjustments given the situation, but you have the basics.’ Mahela was telling me that I have to move my feet in a slightly different way when playing spin – to bat more on off-stump. So those little changes have helped, but they’ve only been small changes. With what those two tell us, often their technical advice is really helpful,” Thirimanne further said.
Thirimanne believes Sri Lanka’s recent slump in form is temporary and expected it all to change soon. “The last two months haven’t been easy, but we need to start showing our character now. In the last year, this is the same team we had. There were a few months in 2014 when we were winning 95% of our matches. We encountered some tough conditions in New Zealand, and that’s set us back, but I think we can overcome that and rally.”
Thirimanne expected better wickets during the World Cup campaign than the ones Sri Lanka played on during the bilateral series against New Zealand. “I think there will be a difference between the wickets we got in the one-day series here, and in the World Cup. We got a few green tops in that series, which is fair, because that is their strength. But because this tournament will be overseen by the ICC, you’ll probably get more batting-friendly conditions – probably every pitch will need over 280. Some of the better batting teams might even be getting scores between 300 and 350.”
