Thin up top

1 century stand.

2 scores of more than 50.

4 batsmen.

18 innings.

12 long months.

Sanaths gone. SL are yet to move on. 4 different combinations have been tried and still Sri Lanka cant find a decent opening pair cool enough to match Marvan and Sanath.

Vandort,  too often he planted his giraffe legs on off stump and nicked it to first slip, to the tune of  17 runs on average in 12 months.

Prasanna Jayawardene, who can’t even put together  decent innings at his usual no 6 or 7 was pushed up against Bangladesh. Which resulted in a 1st ball duck and a 20, PJ was quickly pushed back down and the selectors pretended it never happened.

Paranavitana just debuted, another first baller and then ran himself out. Its early days to pass any judgement on him.

Its pretty clear that the selectors arn’t really sure who should open. That’s the thing about openers, you need to have two solid players at the top of the innings who can be relied upon to deliver, in all conditions. At the moment, the selectors don’t know who that should be. And that’s a big worry.

Mahela Udawatte is an obvious choice, and scored a decent 85 just a day ago in the inter-prov. He seems to have a handle in the ODIs, but you just never know till he plays.

The only thing remotely close to a constant in all this that the selectors seem to think Malinda Warnapura has something about him. He has partnered the other 3 guys who have been tried out.  Exactly what they see, we are not quite sure.

Yes, he has made runs in all the domestic comps. Yes, he has made a few runs in his short stint for SL. But there are so many bleeding holes in his technique outside off stump that his replacement cant be too far away either.

At least he has been given a good run. Which is good. And he averages 45 in the last year, even with his limited ability. Which is nifty for your first year on the job.

Hopefully the selectors find someone they think deserves a similar go at the other end.

Soon.

4 Comments

  1. The Kesh said:

    About malinda – when I first saw him i thought if he goes to Aus or SA he’ll start edging them and give tharanga a run for his money…. but with the short ball he’s done better than i thought… pretty good actually… and today in the first session with his bent elbow he managed this shot off gul that i thought must be pretty difficult for him… but he did it with ease….

    so anyway he might come with his own thing and handle it when there’s pace to deal with but then again don’t think it would be that easy……

    plus had gul and that new guy pitched it up more he could have gotten out sooner….

    March 2, 2009
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  2. The Kesh said:

    And mahela udawatte just tries to smash everything around him….. as Waqar or somebody else said we bring in too many youngsters too early…

    March 2, 2009
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  3. damiths said:

    Kesh > Whatever way you look at it, all the guys who have been tried at the openers slot have really poor techniques, either they are strong on one side of the wicket or they dont have the temperament.

    Marvan had the most classic of techniques and thats why he was so successful abroad, these matches on flat pitches in Pakistan wont show how good or bad these players are until we go to Eng Aus SA or NZ..

    They will be found out. They need more exposure on those tours and they need to start making pitches in SL that offer similar conditions. We cater to spinners too much and its causing too many problems for our top order batsmen when they come up a level at internationals.

    March 2, 2009
    Reply
  4. Kesh said:

    yeah ….. true … have to wait and see whether malinda would be able to deal with it…. atm i think he’ll find it mighty difficult…
    but i rate this guy higher than mahela udawatte… tharanga found some form i think in the domestic matches after he was dropped but since then he haven’t been tried yet…

    Over here they rate Thranga Paranavithana very high… especially roshan abeynayake who was full of praise ….. so we might have something in there…. plus he’s 26…. so not that early too

    ps- i think they brought in kapu too early….

    March 2, 2009
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