Sri Lanka’s tactics, Old wine in a new bottle

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ANGELO MATHEWS
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It was familiar problems for Sri Lanka in the 2nd and 3rd ODIs, same old negative tactics, old wine in a new bottle. They continue to show a complete lack of respect for bowling by selecting only 2/3 frontline bowlers.

Free Hit contributor

The Bowling

In Trent Bridge the bowling looked solid in the first 18 overs when a majority of deliveries were at a back of a length and England lost 6 wickets during this period due to relentless pressure by our seamers bowling stump to stump line. However in the 2nd ODI, the length was all over the place and this inconsistency of the SL bowlers is hurting the team so much.

The spinners Prasanna and Randiv are bowling all sorts of paces and lengths and looked horrible and with no support from them to the seamers to turn the tide and the English openers chased down 254 in 34 overs with ease.

Although Maharoof is known for being a frontline fast bowler, with a slow run up and gentle pace, he looks below average. The selection of Maharoof is basically a short term plan, SL should invest in good young fast bowlers to support the two opening bowlers as his batting too looks lethargic.

The Batting

Dhanushka Gunathilake bats the same way, without really learning much from his mistakes, trying to heave the ball; his eyes are somewhere else, his shoulders and body are not close enough to the ball. It is high time the batting coach speaks to him about good shot selection and the importance of playing a long innings. He needs to improve his defense and footwork too.

Kusal Mendis should practice the pull shot to play with his weight balanced on both feet, rather than dancing around here and there. He did well in the 3rd ODI with a fifty.

Chandimal should learn to play in line with the ball on the off-side like Virat Kohli does. He plays across, looking to heave the ball through mid-wicket every time he wants to increase the run rate. It’s a much better option to play the lofted off drive in line with the ball making room for himself by moving slightly to the leg side.

Mathews needs to practice his back foot drive to accumulate singles and twos rather playing on the front foot and blocking. His balance on many occasions doesn’t look good and on many occasions with drive-able length balls, he tries to play a half glance to mid-wicket and ends up missing and giving away a dot ball. It is much better to play the checked drive with the full face of the bat and maneuver the ball into gaps. He needs to concentrate on his basics rather than worrying about the run rate. A very good drive played will fetch a two or a boundary and it’s much better than playing a half shot with focus on the run rate.

In both ODIs, many agricultural shots were played between the 30th and 50th overs with SL losing the plot and ending up losing many wickets. Especially in the 3rd ODI SL were well all set for a big score at 168/3 in the 36th over. Rather than looking for the big shots, it is much better to play with proper shots and try to get 7 or 8 runs an over and by the 40th over reach 200/3 with Chandimal and Mathews well set at the crease. It is unlikely that the SL batsmen will be able to hit 150 runs in the last 15 overs so it is much better for two set batsmen to continue playing good shots till the 45th over and then to target 50+ runs in the last 5 overs.

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