Hit the deck, break a neck, still no cheque: the quiet sacrifice of SL's red-ball quicks

If you are a seam bowler specialising in Tests, and hail from a non Big-Three nation, as Asitha Fernando and Vishwa Fernando do, you are charting one of the most difficult and least-rewarding courses in international cricket.

Most difficult, because fast bowlers must put their own bodies on the altar of this sport in far more profound ways than batters, spinners, or even wicketkeepers. With every delivery there is the steaming in from dozens of metres away, the ridiculous force that goes through the front leg at the point of delivery, the shoulders, spines, obliques, groins, glutes, calves, feet, all being required to contribute some power to the occasion, and a follow-through that must be navigated safely. If any one of these sectors of your body is even slightly injured, it incapacitates a seam bowler more than similar injuries do for batters or spinners.

Let's take Lahiru Kumara as one example. He was the highest wicket-taker against Bangladesh in the away Test series last year, claiming 11 dismissals at an average of 12.63. The man had not played a single international since his last Test in early February, but had played most of a season of domestic cricket since then, and had been in good shape to make an impact on this home series against Bangladesh. But a week out, he busted a hamstring while fielding at training, and was ruled out of the series. He doesn't get picked in many international white-ball XIs, so this injury will be taking a pretty serious playing opportunity out of his hands. And with a further 11 months before the next Sri Lanka Test is to be played, he has to show substantial willpower to stay in the game till then.

(Side note: Lankan seam-bowling hamstrings in the last two decades have had artists' temperaments. They are capable of jaw-dropping wonders like Dhammika Prasad's spell on the fourth evening at Headingley, or Lasith Malinga's rip-snorters. But if hamstrings had ears or lovers, Lankan fast bowling hamstrings are the type that would cut off their own appendages, or fall apart completely after a break up. They are sublime as part of a creative flow state, but absolutely never to be relied upon.)

Least-rewarding because, three league stints in a year (they don't even really have to be the fancy leagues) will probably net you more money, for way less work. Plus, you know, the promotional dinners, and the parties. Non Big-Three Test cricket tends not to have a lot of parties. Why train your body to bowl 15-20 overs a day, when you can focus on being at peak performance for four?

Matheesha Pathirana, as another example, is very likely the fastest bowler Sri Lanka has ever produced. But at this stage, seems unlikely to ever to play a Test. Chennai Super Kings' scouts got to him before the Sri Lankan cricket system really had, and CSK have genuinely played a role in developing that talent, and have essentially called dibs. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if at the end of his career, Pathirana is remembered most for his IPL exploits, he will probably have earned more money by several orders of magnitude than he would if his career ends with Sri Lanka performances being the highlight.

So pretty soon, it starts to feels like bowling 15-20 overs a day in Test cricket is like getting a several-year loan to buy a reliable Toyota for your family, only for some Crypto kid to pull up next to you at the colour-light in their fully paid-for Bugatti.

Cricket slavishly follows the money now, rather than any other kind of value, and yet the likes of Asitha and Vishwa are still out here doing Test cricket justice by bringing everything they have to it. Asitha has bowling figures like 0 for 110, and 0 for 77 on his record, and yet somehow his work has never felt like "toil". The word implies a physical limpness that Asitha has simply not allowed to enter his cricketing consciousness.

He may be a limited bowler in terms of height, pace, and skill, but to watch him operate in Tests is to watch naked and more-or-less relentless ambition. He took 2 for 43 on day one, on an SSC track not especially suited to his bowling (it was a bit slow for a seamer who tends to skid it on). He had had Anamul Haque dropped before he eventually took that wicket in his second over. Late in the day, he got one to pitch on a length, seam away, and hit the top of Nayeem Hasan's off stump. He was pumped. But then he usually is.

Vishwa, meanwhile, has always had the more laidback temperament. His mode of operation has been swing and seam, and he wiled his way through day one, less physically domineering than Asitha, but no less relentless, no less intense in the challenges he poses to batters. He moved it a little into the left-handers early on, but the seam movement had disappeared by the time a ball in the channel drew Najmul Hossain Shanto's outside edge. Vishwa, a less-than-six-feet medium-pace bowler, will point to the bouncer he bowled the previous ball as a perfect set-up delivery to the wicket-taking one. You could doubt that explanation, but there's no doubting figures of 2 for 35 off 16 overs - that economy rate being 2.18. There is almost no scorecard in the world in which those are not good figures.

Sri Lankan Test seam bowling doesn't necessarily have so rich a tradition, only three of their quicks (Chaminda Vaas, Malinga, and Suranga Lakmal) have ever taken more than 100 Test wickets. But as Test cricket appears to be winding down in several of its markets, it feels like Asitha and Vishwa are now partakers of a separate, global club of Test bowlers, who have trained their bodies to bowl 15-20 overs a day, and find themselves less valued than bowlers who send down only four.

In this group, there are players such as Chris Martin, who took 233 Test wickets for New Zealand and was taking university courses (presumably to broaden job opportunities) well into his 30s, while sharing a dressing room with the likes of Brendon McCullum and Ross Taylor - each IPL millionaires. Others like Kemar Roach, owner of one of the most vicious inswingers in world cricket, has watched other careers take off into the T20 league stratosphere, while his remained moored to a middling West Indies Test side. Mohammad Abbas, Neil Wagner, Ebadot Hossain, Vernon Philander, Blessing Muzarabani - all these bowlers belong to this genre.

For many in the non Big-Three sphere, it has begun to feel as if the publicity gained from "Saving Test Cricket" has become more profitable than the actual saving of Test cricket. This is why Bazball is able to equate the health of this format to scoring at between 4 and 4.5 per over, for example, while England has not hosted Bangladesh in the last 14 years, or Zimbabwe in more than 20 until the current summer. Australia have, in previous administrative eras, been hesitant tourists to South Asia. India's modern top players play roughly half their Tests against the other Big Three teams. Jasprit Bumrah has played 59% of his 46 Tests against Australia and England.

Still, what is happening at the SSC is Test cricket too, at least under current definitions. And increasingly Test cricket feels like a concept divorced from merit. Two of the three World Test Championship winners are sides with ailing Test programmes. Cricket has no serious will to fix that.

The likes of Asitha and Vishwa will never have the chance to develop their Test-bowling skills as much as bowlers from nations that have stronger cricketing economies do. These are the margins of Test cricket that are most at-risk. If Asitha and Vishwa don't make it, then who is going to inspire the next generation of Lankan red-ball bowlers?

But at least in 2025, these two are still here, still putting their bodies through the seam-bowling rigours, and still taking important wickets. Test cricket is lucky to still have them.