Sri Lanka improve, but not enough to win World Cup

Sri Lanka Under 19 cricket team’s campaign at the World Cup 2010 in New Zealand came to an end in the semifinals with Chathura Peiris’ team failing to go past Australia. Then in the third place play-off match the Lankans came unstuck against the West Indies. However, the fourth position the team captured – and the number 4 ranking that will come with it – is big improvement from the position they finished on (number 7) in Malaysia in 2008.
Sri Lanka Under 19 had enough and more training for the event. With Sri Lanka Cricket wisely investing in the youth cricketers, the team received top notch training under Naveed Nawaz, with former batting great Aravinda de Silva at hand for additional input. The team also had enough exposure – with tours of Australia and South Africa and a home tri-nation tournament involving Pakistan and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka was the only team to have played eventual champions Australia and losing finalists Pakistan before the start of the tournament.
The coaching staff aimed to expose the team to top teams in the world so that the players would have some knowledge about them before the showpiece event.
That ploy did work – Sri Lanka thrashed South Africa in the quarterfinal and came very close to upset Australia in the semis (losing by 2 wickets with 9 balls remaining)
However, in a World Cup a team needs to overcome topnotch opposition. In that respect Sri Lanka failed against New Zealand in the first round, Australia in the semis and the West Indies in the play-off match. The only top team they beat was South Africa. With wins against minnows Canada and Zimbabwe their passage into the quarterfinals was relatively easy.

The positives

The positives Sri Lanka can gain from World Cup 2010 are emergence of captain Chathura Peiris as a left arm strike bowler. His tally of 13 wickets in 6 matches was just behind Papua New Guinea’s RC Haoda’s 15. However three more players shared the same number of wickets. Peiris’ best was 5 for 25 vs Canada. The international commentary panel that included former great players like Wasim Akram praised Peiris’ captaincy too.
Sri Lanka captain’s bowling partner Charith Jayampathy too had a good tournament. His tally was 12 wickets. Both of them reaped good dividends on seam-friendly New Zealand wickets.
The batting honours went to left handed Banuka Rajapaksa. The hard-hitting Royalist amassed 253 runs at an average of 63.25 and finished fourth in the highest number of run getters’ list. His tally included two half centuries. His attractive shot making came in for praise and fetched him the man of the match honours on a couple of occasions. Rajapaksa’s contribution with the bat was impressive as conditions most of the time favoured the bowlers.
Although Sri Lanka’s bowling was impressive their batting and fielding didn’t always click – a factor that prevented the team from going all the way to win the title. The slower bowlers didn’t always support the medium pacemen who had already made inroads into the opposition batting. The conditions too were against them.
Opener Andry Berenger (averaging 16.20) and promising batsman Rumesh Buddika (averaging 32 with a top score of 42) didn’t help Sri Lanka’s cause. Danushka Gunatillaka, Kithruwan Vithanagae and Akshu Fernando played useful knocks in the middle order. However, no batsman went past the 100 run mark with stand-in wicket-keeper batsman Denuwan Rajakaruna’s 94 against the West Indies in his only appearance being the highest. Another factor that went against Sri Lanka was the batsmen’s failure to hit sixes – the entire team managed only 5 sixes. Although the coaching staff pinned their hopes on Berenger to come good match after match he too missed some catches behind the stumps, a cardinal offence at a World Cup.

- (DS)