Cricket lessons for Sri Lanka and for Australia (16 January 1999)

16 January 1999

Cricket lessons for Sri Lanka and for Australia

Samson Abeyagunawardena

AUSTRALIA, Thursday - The Sri Lankan cricketers should have so far learned at least four lessons from their current tour of Australia. first, the best way they can master the peculiar conditions Australian wickets pose to both batsmen and to bowlers is by sending players with Test potential to cricket academies and cricket clinics here.

Second, an Australian team would not consider a score, however high, set by the side batting first as being too difficult to surpass.

Third, Sri Lanka, like Australia and England, should develop two cricket teams: one for Test cricket, the other for one-day matches.

Fourth, there is the amazing depth of cricketing talent in Australia.

Australia has readily accepted Test and one-day fixtures in the sub-continent, where the wickets favour spinners and which therefore produce some of the world's best spin bowlers. An Australian television cricket commentator pointed out recently that young Test hopefuls are sent to a clinic in spin bowling run by a previous Indian Test captain and spin bowler, Bishen Bedi.

This experience and training overseas explains why the Australians, playing on wickets in Pakistan, beat the Pakistanis in the Test series last year. This was the first time Australia won a Test series in Pakistan. Sending young players to spin clinics in india is good preparation for the Australia vs India Test series scheduled to be played here during the 1999-2001 season.

England's team now touring Australia has floundered against the Australian spinners. A commentator pointed out that the Englishmen would perhaps have handled spin better had they played more often in the sub-continent.

Playing their first match in Sydney last night against Australia in the current one-day triangular series here, the Sri Lankans learned that no score is so high as to put the Australians off from attempting to surpass it. When the Sri Lankans scored at the rate of five runs an over, they probably thought it was a match-winning score. But the Australians rose to the challenge and scored at the rate of six runs an over.

The Australians are not unbeatable; the Sri Lankans have beaten them squarely several times in one-day matches. But the Australians will not be beaten easily; they will not give up until the last ball has been bowled.

So to the third lesson, which is that Test cricket and one-day cricket require different techniques and therefore different training. Therefore Sri Lanka needs to set about building two teams. Of course some Test cricketers also make successful one-day players, as the Waugh brothers, Shane Warne and Glen McGrath have demonstrated. But not all, which is why such highly rated Test players like Mark Taylor, Ian Healy and Justin Langer have not made it to the one-day side.

Sri Lankans sprang to great prominence in cricket because of the way they played the one-day game. Last year, however, as one of the Daily News cricket writers pointed out recently, Sri Lanka did better at Test cricket than in the one-day matches. Does this mean that when we do well in one style we slip in the other? If so, this would strengthen the case for separate teams.

The fourth lesson is the depth of talent available to the Australian selectors in a population about the same as Sri Lanka's. There is so much talent that a player like Blewett, with several centuries in first class cricket to his credit this summer, cannot make it to the Test team. Ways in which to spot more talent and to nurture it could be devised.

These lessons aside, having read a piece on Arjuna Ranatunga in today's Melbourne Age, it seems there are some things Australia could learn from the Sri Lankan captain.

In an article published in the Age, headlined "Ranatunga, Sri Lanka's captain of serenity", Roebuck describes Ranatunga as "a cricketer of beautiful provocations and a man whose wry touches are lost upon these opponents."

Roebuck continues: "The duel between the opposing captains in Sydney was a splendid piece of theatre - the brazen antagonism from down under and the subtle manipulator from Colombo pitting their skills and wills against each other.

"Of course Ranatunga and Shane Warne have much in common. Warne may be inclined to smile or scowl and Ranatunga to shrug but both are constantly on the warpath. Ranatunga pushes and withdraws with the art of the born diplomat. Warne is a rougher case but every bit as combative. It frustrates him that he cannot put the Sri Lankan captain into a corner, cannot work him over.

"Ranatunga is an elusive prey. His toughness lies hidden behind a veil of charm Ranatunga turns Australian aggression against itself, upsets, disturbs and annoys them because he will not fight on their terms.

Source :: Daily News (https://www.lanka.net)