A tale of two stadiums
Sri Lanka Cricket’s defence that the Premadasa Stadium, which is undergoing extensive renovation, was used for the second Test against the West Indies to allow the Sri Lanka players to test the pitch before the World Cup makes no sense because you
Dustin Silgardo
25-Feb-2013
Sri Lanka Cricket’s defence that the Premadasa Stadium, which is undergoing extensive renovation, was used for the second Test against the West Indies to allow the Sri Lanka players to test the pitch before the World Cup makes no sense because you can’t judge how a pitch will play in ODIs based on a Test, Trevor Chesterfield writes in the Island.
Despite the rain and what play there was available, the pitch said nothing. "You cannot gauge what a one-day match is going to be like from a Test match," Sangakkara said. “We have to see how the pitch behaves under lights. How it will play as more and more matches are played. How it behaves with the white ball.” It is one thing to restructure a playing surface, but without a genuine pre-Test trial with games being played, it is useless.
In the same paper, Rex Clementine interviews Kumar Sangakkara about his memories of the Asgiriya Stadium, which has been replaced as Kandy’s Test venue by the new Pallekele stadium, which will host the third Test against the West Indies.
Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara, an old boy of Trinity College, grew up playing his cricket at Asgiriya and regretted not having the chance of playing international cricket at his school ground in the future. "I love playing at Asgiriya. It is a fantastic cricket wicket and it has produced great results. If you bat first you lose four or five wickets by lunch and then it settles down and it starts turning," Sangakkara who scored a match winning 152 in the last Test played here said.
Dustin Silgardo is a former sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo