Keep backing players with right attitude

by Rex Clementine

Sri Lanka’s heart-wrenching four wicket loss in Galle on Thursday has highlighted some flaws in the team. Catching of the two teams made a huge difference in the end result. While Pakistan pulled off some stunners, Sri Lanka were sloppy dropping two catches off double centurion Saud Shakeel while a stumping chance of Naseem Shah during his 94-run stand with Shakeel for the ninth wicket went begging.

Another player who has come under the scanner is off-spinner Ramesh Mendis. While wicketkeeper Sadeera Samarawickrama is safe for the moment, Mendis is facing the axe with questions over his control. Will have to wait and see what the selectors do but from a distance it’s quite clear that both players need to be persevered with.

Sadeera replaced long standing wicketkeeper Niroshan Dickwella, who is quite popular among the team although he doesn’t seem to have many friends outside the team.

Several Sri Lankan players both current and recently retired have rated Dickwella to be the best wicketkeeper in the country. That may be true and it’s a pity that your best keeper can’t find a place in the team.

Let’s not deal with Dickwella’s off the field excesses but he cooked his goose with his callous attitude towards the game. Throwing away his wicket at crucial junctures of the game and not converting starts were his biggest flaws.

Dickwella was Sri Lanka’s wicketkeeper for a good ten years and featured in 54 Test matches in that period but wasn’t able to convert any of his 22 half-centuries to a hundred. You look around the cricketing world and check the records of other keepers and you are convinced that he deserved the axe. Tom Blundell of New Zealand has four Test hundreds and so does Sarfraz Ahmed of Pakistan while India’s Rishab Pant has five hundreds and all three have featured in less Tests than Dickwella. Let’s not even talk about England’s Jonny Bairstow, who is a standout among his contemporaries.

The other disappointing factor about Dickwella is his arrogance. He cost the team dearly with his horrendous reviewing. There was this Test match against England in Galle where Sri Lanka had exhausted their reviews even before their best bowler Rangana Herath had come onto bowl.

Of course, all the blame can not be placed at Dickwella’s doorstep for the captain either should have asked the keeper to get his act together or stopped trusting him. It’s a tough one because the keeper has the best view in advising the captain on whether to make the ‘T’ sign or not. Dickwella was so impulsive and advices to the captain proved to be poor. But the manner in which he appealed and pleaded with the umpire convinced you otherwise. Had he joined the film industry instead of cricket, he could have given Gamini Fonseka a good run for his money.

As Michael Atherton said of Harry Brook, “Along the way players are going to make some errors, but you should make room for players to learn from those errors and bounce back.”

Sadly for Sri Lankan cricket, Dickwella did not learn. Had he got his act together; it is he who should be understudy to Dimuth Karunaratne and not Dhananjaya de Silva.

Sadeera, in the meanwhile, is no Mahela Jayawardene either when it comes to reviewing. He made several wrong calls during the first Test. MJ of course as captain had an unblemished record with his reviews when he was captain. Why he was so successful was he reviewed only when he suspected that the umpire may have made a mistake. Perhaps, Sadeera should have a chat to MJ and pick his brains on reviewing.

It’s early days for Sadeera. When he made a hundred against Ireland on his comeback Test, it looked all too easy. But Pakistan have proved to be tough opponents and in both innings he fell for superb catches.

As for Ramesh Mendis, despite him taking a five-wicket haul in Galle in the first innings, there are questions about his control. That question has been there for some time now and it remains to be seen whether he will be given the cold shoulder at SSC now that there’s already a backup off-spin option in the squad.

The sensible thing seemed to keep backing him. Like Sadeera, Ramesh is another player who has got a good head on his shoulders .You have invested on him heavily and it only makes sense to keep backing him for players with right attitudes are very much the need of the hour for Sri Lanka.