< 1 minute read ‘Bye bye Sachin, Rahul, Sourav and VVS, the new generation are here now. You guys are past it, but we’ll conquer Ajantha Mendis and Muttiah Muralitharan with ease.’ This is what India’s glittery one-day batting line-up might have said, but it would have been followed by a bit of a
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Mendissed-out
< 1 minute read We can’t believe none of you have got anything to say about Andrew Strauss’s slow transformation into a slightly defective Blockatron 9000. We were sure you’d have strong feelings about that. How about Sri Lanka beating India? Have you got thoughts about that? We’re rather hoping that you do, because
Continue readingVirender Sehwag defies pretty much everyone and everything
< 1 minute read Murali. Vaas. Mendis. A pitch with one wet end and one cracked end. Rain. Reason. Virender Sehwag defied them all. Dravid, Tendulkar and Ganguly mustered seven between them. Gautam Gambhir had a lot of luck to edge his way to 56. VVS Laxman hung around for a bit. The tail
Continue readingSri Lankan tactics
< 1 minute read Sri Lanka have always had a good plan when playing at home, but it did have one slight flaw. Someone had to bowl at the other end. If you’re a touring side batting in a Test in Sri Lanka, you effectively play two different matches. At one end, you counter
Continue readingIt’s Mahela Jayawardene at the SSC. Again.
< 1 minute read If Sanath Jayasuriya’s catchphrase would be ‘ha-haaaa‘, then Mahela Jayawardene’s ought to be just silence. He’s not speaking because he’s concentrating. Jayawardene averages near enough a hundred at Galle, but it’s at the Sinhalese Sports Club Ground that he REALLY likes batting. No-one’s ever scored more Test runs at a
Continue readingMalinda Warnapura’s hundred unexpectedly delights us
< 1 minute read We think we might have subconsciously adopted Malinda Warnapura and we’ve no real idea when it happened or why. All we know is that he scored a hundred against India today and we thought ‘well played our guy’. At that point we stopped. ‘Wait a minute, why are we thinking
Continue readingAjantha Mendis to make his Test debut
< 1 minute read Let’s close our eyes to England’s filthy performance and instead imagine we’re in Sri Lanka. The sun is shining, monkeys are rife, you’re having string hoppers for breakfast and Sri Lanka are playing India in Colombo. They’ll already have started by now and Ajantha Mendis should be playing. Unfortunately, Lasith
Continue readingAjantha Mendis sorts everything out
< 1 minute read Sanath Jayasuriya might have pummelled a trademark hundred, but Ajantha Mendis won Sri Lanka the Asia Cup. If you want to see some impressive bowling figures, read on: 6-13 off eight overs. Virender Sehwag had hit a 26-ball fifty when Mendis came on to bowl, so the young spinner basically
Continue readingThe carrom ball
< 1 minute read Ajantha Mendis’s ‘carrom ball’ does look to be pretty much a new delivery. Inventing a new delivery is a pretty brash thing to do. It’s almost like discovering a new colour or introducing a new letter into the alphabet. We should have all the deliveries already – cricket’s been around
Continue readingBenevolent Uncle Sanath scythes on
< 1 minute read Tell you what we like in cricket: we like people who made their names doing one spectactular thing in particular to do exactly that thing only at a slightly advanced age. For example, you might say to a cricketing newcomer: “This is Sanath Jayasuriya. He’s famous for scoring runs ludicrously
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