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‘Young Sri
Lankans’ more experienced than appears
Date Posted: March 18, 2008:
GEORGETOWN, Guyana – Upon his arrival to the
Caribbean, when asked about his team’s batting relying
heavily on himself and senior team mate Kumar Sangakkara,
Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene agreed but said that
his team includes “some exciting youngsters who have come
through the system”.
It was a comment that was taken by the gathered media on
face value but scrutiny of the Sri Lanka squad leads one to
believe that in ‘young players’ Jayawardene did not
necessarily mean players who are now crawling out of the
Under 19 leagues. Neither did he mean players who have a
handful of First Class matches under their belt. So who
exactly are these ‘youngsters’ Jayawardene is referring to?
The 15 man squad’s youngest player is 25 year old fast
bowler Nuwan Kulasekara. There is also a 26 year old (Chanaka
Welegedara), a 27 year old (Thilan Thushara) and four 28
year olds (Chamara Silva, Michael Vandort, Prasanna
Jayawardene and Malinda Warnapura).
Left arm spinner Rangana Herath who turns 30 three days
before the first Test joins seven others in the squad who
are 30 years old or older. The average age of the Sri Lanka
Test squad is 29 years.
Contrast that to the average age of the West Indies squad
for the first Test being 26 years. There is only one player
(Shivnarine Chanderpaul) in the home side’s squad who is
over 30. Of the other 13 there are two 23 year olds (Denesh
Ramdin and Jerome Taylor), two 24 year olds (Dwayne Bravo
and Amit Jaggernauth) and four 26 year olds (Fidel Edwards,
Devon Smith, Sewnarine Chattergoon and Sulieman Benn).
Four of the Sri Lankans are yet to play 100 first class
matches. Four of the West Indians have played in 100 first
class matches or more. They are Shivnarine Chanderpaul
(214), Ramnaresh Sarwan (166), Chris Gayle (144) and Devon
Smith (100).
Apart from Jayawardene and Sangakkara the newer cadre of Sri
Lankan batsmen have a total of 863 First Class matches and a
staggering 42,818 First Class runs. That includes 88
centuries and 211 fifties among them.
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It speaks to the emerging culture of Sri Lankan cricket when
the captain refers to players who have such First Class
stats as the young ones. It is a particularly stark contrast
in the West Indies where the newer batsmen in the current
Test squad (obviously excluding Chanderpaul, Sarwan and
Gayle) have put together 24,158 runs from 473 matches.
This does not necessarily expose the quality of the various
batsmen but the figures do show that the Sri Lankans are
more experienced both in number of matches played and runs
scored.
While the current crop of ‘young’ Sri Lankan batsmen,
following the retirement of long serving batsmen Sanath
Jayasuriya and Marvan Attapattu, may now be fighting to
establish themselves in international cricket, they are
coming into the fray with solid First Class records. And it
is not that they are now arriving either, Tillakaratne
Dilshan made his Test debut since 1999, wicketkeeper
Prasanna Jayawardene in 2000 and Thilan Samaraweera and
Michael Vandort in 2001.
Despite initial appearances the Digicel Test Series will be
quite a bit of the experienced Sri Lankans versus the
youthful and exuberant West Indians but with the home boys
playing in familiar stadiums with the advantage of local
crowd support. The mix should make for a competitive series
as the West Indies seeks to prevent the visitors from
racking up their first win in this part of the world.
