Sri Lanka

Once World Champions, now an average team, can Sri Lanka ever become the team they once were under skipper Arjuna Ranatunga?? Srilanka aren’t bad at all right now but they were once so invincible that beating them was a milestone even for a team like Australia. Their success mainly lied in the opening marriage of Sanath Jayasurya and Romesh Kaluwitherana, with their swash buckling and consistently high entertaining innings they made a run rate 8 an over look bad. Their prowess was so commanding that they broke the highest score records in both forms of the game, 398/6 against Kenya and 957 against India, do those totals look like cricket scores? That’s what I’m talking about.

Once again the famous Asian Internal team wars struck and that lead to Arjuna Ranatunga quitting and this was soon followed by Sri Lanka’s main batsman Arvinda Desilva doing the same. Fact is Sri Lanka were a very poor side before this gush of performances and after the great quitting the jolt was so bad that they still haven’t recovered. Jayasurya has added responsibilities now as the current Sri Lankan skipper and the fact is that that affects any player’s performance as we even saw with current cricketing greats like Sachin Tendulkar and Saurav Ganguly. Jayasurya a man who has the record for the fastest half century and his fastest century is second to only Pakistan’s Shahid Afridi pretty much fizzles out regularly now. Currently Sri Lanka win their share but can no longer be called a real threat to teams such as Australia, India or South Africa this is mainly due to inconsistent performances by Maravan Attapatu, Jayasurya himself, Mahila Jayawardane, the Dravid of Sri Lanka and mostly Vaas. Utpal Petabenge Josheph Warnakulasurya Chaminda Vaas was a tiger under the guidance of captain Ranatunga but now he’s lost pace and sometimes wavers in line and length too. Sri Lanka were once always the favorites in multinational competitions but now seldom are due to their inconsistent performances. In my opinion they’ll take a while before evolving into a team they once were under Ranatunga!!