Sri Lanka’s tour of Pakistan served up both honey and hemlock. The 3-0 whitewash in the ODIs was a bitter pill to swallow, not least because it knocked the team off their hard-earned number four ICC perch. Then they walked into the tri-series and promptly lost the first two games. Only when their backs were pinned to the wall did they come out swinging, pulling off back-to-back wins that rekindled hopes of a grand finish in the final.
Losing is part of cricket’s fine print. But what cuts deep is how you lose — sometimes rolling over without a scrap, sometimes forgetting to play the smart, streetwise cricket that wins tournaments.
>> Sri Lanka steadier in Asia Cup but flaws linger <<
The ODI series was especially galling because Sri Lanka threw away winning positions in the first two games. In the tri-series final, they stubbornly refused to read the room — or the pitch — and paid the heavy price that comes with misreading conditions.
At 84 for one at the halfway mark, they were cruising along as if they were on a Sunday stroll. A sensible side would have aimed for 140 on that surface. Instead, once the spinners took the ball, the pitch morphed into a different creature, yet our batters swung as if they were still on a flat track. Players with years of international cricket in their lockers should have realised this was never a 160 wicket.
Too many went fishing for glory shots. Batters not built for launching into orbit still threw the kitchen sink, the soap dish and the plumbing at deliveries that demanded finesse. Punching the ball into gaps, rotating strike, running like your life depends on it — these basic virtues seem to have slipped through the cracks.
The selectors now need to go back to the drawing board and unearth our best players of spin. Young, nimble-footed batters who can scurry between the wickets and play with soft hands. A World Cup is less than 100 days away — we simply cannot afford to treat spin like a foreign language.
Not that the three-week tour was all doom and gloom. Kamill Mishara announced himself with back-to-back fifties. More than a batter, he’s a full toolkit — able to bat up or down the order, keep wickets, even roll his arm over. A touch of the Dilshan all-round aura there.
>>Future of Sri Lankan cricket in safe hands, says Mathews<<
Dushmantha Chameera, meanwhile, served thunderbolts with the new ball and was ice-cold at the death. His spells were central to Sri Lanka’s passage to the final. With the World Cup around the corner and his history of injuries, you’d hope the team wraps him in cotton wool and plays him only in T20s until then.
On the flip side, Kusal Janith Perera endured a lean patch, barely crossing double figures once. The heat will now be on the selectors. KJP remains a vital cog in Sri Lanka’s T20 machine — a rare left-hander who can clear the ropes without breaking sweat. He’s scored a T20I hundred in New Zealand this year and a timely fifty against India in Dubai. This is not the moment for knee-jerk reactions; class is permanent and he deserves the long handle of faith.
The bigger worry is our habit of pushing batters into formats they’re not built for. Success as an ODI opener may translate to T20 cricket — but middle-order roles demand an entirely different skill set. Spotting those talents early, nurturing them and giving them the long rope is the real homework.
Fielding, Sri Lanka’s proud turnaround story over the last two years, took a backward step too. The team that lit up the Asia Cup with bullet throws and gravity-defying grabs suddenly started grassing not half-chances but sitters. That drop in standards may well have cost them the ODI series.
All said and done, the tour offered enough lessons to fill a coach’s notebook. Now it’s up to Sri Lanka to turn those lessons into muscle memory before the World Cup bell rings.
