A Yorkshireman counselling us on attacking cricket  

By Rex Clementine

Some of Sri Lanka’s best cricketing moments while touring England have come in Leeds, the capital city of Yorkshire. During the 2006 tour, England had posted 321 and looked good to avoid a 5-0 whitewash. Sri Lankans threw caution to the wind reaching the target with more than 12 overs to spare and eight wickets in hand. England fans’ mood wasn’t great that day and a few minutes after Sri Lanka completing a 5-0 routing came more misery with news that Yorkshire legend Fred Trueman had passed away. Eight years later, it was again at Leeds Sri Lanka completed a historical Test series win in England.

The cricket Sri Lanka played at that time was attractive, attacking and aggressive. In back to back World Cups in 2011 and 2015, Sri Lanka thrashed England by ten and nine wickets respectively. England were no match to the islanders when it came to shorter formats of the game. Many are the English bowlers whose careers that Sanath Jayasuriya had ended.

Yet, it has taken a Yorkshireman to remind us that Sri Lanka need to play ‘brave’ cricket without ‘the fear of failure’. Chris Silverwood is his name. In his first media interaction earlier this week, Silverwood stressed on intent to score and giving players the confidence to do so. He is spot on.

In recent times, the national cricket team’s strategy in the 50 over format has been utilizing the 50 overs and if it took Test match cricketers to achieve this purpose, they didn’t mind brining them in. Legends who thrived playing fearless cricket soon when in administration were going on reverse gear to ensure there weren’t frequent collapses. They may have not been directly involved in selecting teams but they had a proxy.

Silverwood’s theories on limited overs cricket was music to the ear. Sri Lanka have been doing so many wrongs especially in white ball cricket under the watch of legends and a breath of fresh air was certainly the need of the hour.

You can safely assume that the team has most bases covered when it comes to the bowling attack given the presence of Dushmantha Chameera, Wanindu Hasaranga and Maheesh Theekshana. It is the batting that has been a worry and sadly Sri Lanka playing one day cricket like what England used to do 25 years ago. They are packing the side with bits and pieces all-rounders and are content at batting out the 50 overs. The concept of putting away the first ball you face to the boundary if it was meant to be hit has become unSri Lankan these days.

How did we suddenly lose the plot? Well, while the rest of the cricketing world has moved at a hectic pace giving clean strikers of the ball more opportunities in shorter formats of the game, we have been content at bringing in Test match players to feature in ODI cricket. Nowhere else in the world Niroshan Dickwella will play Test cricket and not white ball cricket and Dinesh Chandimal vice-versa.

Mickey Arthur two years ago took up a tough challenge and had reasonable success. Now it’s up to Silverwood to finish off the good work that Arthur started.