Sri Lanka’s uphill task

Sri Lanka has always underperformed in Australia and probably least successful sub-continent team apart from Bangladesh against Australia in Australia. The reason for the downfall has been their inability to bat against pace and bounce. I will not be surprised even if the dream of winning a test match Australia against Australia remains as a dream at the end of this series too given the form that Sri Lanka is in at the moment. The biggest problem that Sri Lanka has is their inconsistent and inexperienced batting line-up. This batting line-up has failed so many times both in limited over matches and test matches in the recent past. I don’t see any sign of situation getting better in the near future either. Entire batting responsibility will fall on Mahela Jayawardena and Kumar Sangakkara in this series too like it has been happening for so many years. To Sri Lanka’s disappointment, both Mahela and Sangakkara are also struggling to find their form these days. Unless those two perform well in this series, Sri Lanka will be in a big trouble in terms of batting. To be frank, there is no point in blaming selectors for this situation because there are not good enough players to play international cricket in domestic cricket either. Selectors have given youngsters enough chances to show their potential but most of them have not lived up to the expectations.

Although Australia lost the test series against South Africa, they are in a good form. They played well first two test matches and they could easily have won the second match. Therefore, Sri Lankans will be facing many problems from the very first ball on of this series. Getting wickets of Michael Clerk, Micheal Hussey, David Warner and Ed Cowen will be a huge challenge for Sri Lanka in this series. Sri Lanka seem to have strengthened their fast-bowling power having included Chanak Welagedara and Nuwan Pradeep for this series although we don’t know to what extent they will trouble Australians.      

NO good bowlers or what?

Michael Clerk has scored 3 double
centuries and 1 triple century in this
year alone. 

Having seen so many double centuries scored by batsman during last 5 years or so, I am wondering what the reason for such a trend is. Sometimes, I feel that the current bowlers are not as good as the bowlers existed in the past. At the same time, I feel that the current batsmen may be better than the batsmen the were in the past. I am finding it very difficult to find a proper answer for that question. But I tend to lean towards the fact that there are not many good bowlers playing international cricket at the moment. Therefore, I have to rule out the fact that current batsmen are better than past batsmen were. If you look at the batting records of last 10 years or so, you can certainly see that there is a huge increase in the number of double centuries scored in test cricket whereas in the past, scoring a double century was regarded as an intricate thing to do.

In the past, most of the test teams had threatening bowling line-ups. By contrast, nowadays, there are only few bowling line-ups that fall into that category. I can only talk about the teams that I have seen. To be honest, I don’t know how good the bowlers who played before 90s were. In the 90s and early 2000s, Pakistan had bowlers such as Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akthar, Waqar Younis and Saqlain Mushtaq. Once, all those bowlers played together in the same team. So, I don’t need to stress how good they were. And Australia had bowlers like Glen McGrath, Shane Warne, Jason Gillepsie, Brett Lee in late 90s and early 2000s. They were simply unplayable at the time. West Indies also had great bowlers such as Courtly Ambrose, Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop and Otis Gibson. South Africa had Shaun Pollock, Alan Donald, Makaya Ntini. Sri Lanka mostly relied on Muralidaran and Chaminda Vass particularly in test matches. But they had built a good bowling attack around those two bowlers for almost a decade. I see neither a decline nor an improvement of India’s and Newzeland’s bowlers up to now. 

Once, most of the teams had decent bowling attacks against which batting was very difficult. No team could go to Australia and dominate Australians like South Africa and England did in recent series. Actually, in my opinion, South Africa is the only team that haven’t lost their fast-bowling power since they got the test status for the second time in the early 90s. Even current bowling attack is just as good as the ones they had before. That is why they have become the No.1 test team by today. England’s bowling have improved a lot during last 7 or 8 years or so. In the past, they had weak bowling line-ups and it was one of the reasons why they hadn’t won the ashes for a long time until they won it in 2005. England current bowling line-up is probably the best English bowling attack I have seen so far without a doubt.

Getting back to the topic, I think the lack of good international bowlers could be the main reason for the increase in the number of big scores scored by batsmen very often these days. I couldn’t think of any other reason for that kind of a tendency.

The number of double centuries scored in test matches from 1990 – 2011

Year	Number of double centuries	Year	Number of double centuries
1990	2	2001	9
1991	3	2002	12
1992	2	2003	14
1993	4	2004	14
1994	4	2005	10
1995	3	2006	9
1996	3	2007	6
1997	7	2008	7
1998	4	2009	8
1999	10	2010	12
2000	5	2011	7

During the period between 1990 and 2000, batsmen have scored double 40 double centuries whereas from 2000 to 2013, 113 double centuries have been scored in test matches. We can clearly see that there is a huge turnaround is the nature of test cricket.

Perhaps, the fearless cricket played by modern batsmen may also have been a reason for such a trend. In the 90s, batsmen were too cautious in test matches and as a result, bowlers could dominate them very easily. But nowadays, batsmen look to be aggressive even in test matches in order to upset the bowlers’ tactics and rhythm. About 20 years ago, I didn’t see such approaches being used by batsmen and they were always respecting the bowlers who bowled well. Perhaps, the way test cricket is played has changed because of the dominance of limited over cricket. 

Downfall of test cricket and rise of Twenty20 cricket

Cricket fans around the world are thoroughly enjoying the twenty20 world cup at the moment. Even people who are not big cricket fans are watching this tournament with huge interest. We all can enjoy twenty20 cricket no matter how we analyse it. It is the shortness of twenty20 cricket that has attracted people to cricket more than anything else.

A test match being played

As the popularity of twenty20 cricket goes up, some people have found test cricket very boring. Is test cricket actually boring? To be honest, although I have been watching test cricket for a long time, I find it difficult to answer that question straightaway. Unfortunately, test cricket has been struggling to keep up its audience and its popularity is going down day by day. We have to admit that it is the test cricket that shows us the real quality of cricket. But it has been unable to entertain many of the cricket fans around the world due to its longevity. In this modern world, who can watch a game for five days? The answer would be only few.

Sri Lanka vs England T20 match

In order to make test cricket more interesting, cricket authorities are coming up with all sorts of ideas like shortening it to four days and playing matches at night. However, in trying to shorten test cricket, we are again going to make it another limited over format. And also, it is not going to attract more people because it is still a game of four days. If we are to popularize cricket all around the world, cricket should be made worth watching. People are used to watching short and exciting games. People only welcome those kinds of games and test cricket doesn’t fall into that category anyway. Therefore, test cricket cannot be used as a product to promote cricket in countries where cricket is not popular that much at the moment. 

By contrast, twenty20 cricket is becoming popular at a rapid rate. It has even made 50-over cricket look boring despite 50-over cricket being much shorter game than test cricket. So, when we look at the interest of the people, we can certainly see that people would rather watch short and exciting game than watching a game for five days. What twenty20 cricket has done is that it has attracted more people to the game and even non-cricket fans have started to watch cricket. When the development of cricket is considered, attracting people to cricket is a very important thing.

In any sport, audience is a very important factor and cricket is no exception. Money would be invested in cricket, only if there is a big enough market for the people to gain benefits. No TV company want to invest money in something that nobody watches. Therefore, it is important that we choose the right way to move ahead.