“Kawda Do Ponnaya?” – Maxwell

Apparently Glen Maxwell, while interacting with the SCG crowd had asked the real ponnaya to please stand up. That explains the amount of people on their feet.

Really, people. It’s great that everyone has a great time, it really is. Seeing nearly 700 runs scored in a day is a big deal. But that’s all this cricket is to us. It’s just a giant excuse to party. For the spectators, the administration, and barring some dedicated professionals for the team as well, by the looks of things. Everyone’s just having a laugh. In Royal – Thomian weekend it’s often said that nobody really cares about the cricket, and honestly, it looks that way about Sri Lanka cricket too. This nava gilunath baan choon attitude is great, and helps you make the best out of a bad situation. But it really does bugger all to help you from getting into that position in the first place.

I wrote last week that we needed to justify the euphoria of beating England and Bangladesh convincingly. They played terrible cricket against us. NZ and Australia played really good cricket against us and we got smashed. Afghanistan played really good cricket against us and we almost lost. So the optimism with which we went into the game against Australia seemed a little misplaced. The crowd at the SCG was there to have a good time at all costs. The cricket was incidental.

Sri Lanka got beaten by 64 runs. They scored 20% less runs than Australia. In my book that’s a pretty hefty loss. But somehow SL fans are justifying the great fightback. It’s inexplicable. The ‘ifs’ floating around are also fantastic. IF Chandimal hadn’t gotten injured. IF Mahela hadn’t got run out. IF the no ball had been given. IF this. IF that. Doesn’t matter. What IS, is what matters.

And on the scoreboard, Australia won by 64 runs. The at least we chased and got 300 + argument is invalid. Because cricket is a game of three disciplines. Being good at one and not the other two is not going to win us games. That has been painfully obvious except to those that matter. Condoning yesterday’s loss, for me, is like saying ‘well at least Hitler didn’t kill 10 million Jews’. It’s nonsense. A heavy defeat, is a heavy defeat. Accept it for it is, and work on not getting heavily defeated again.

The sad part about this particular loss was that it wasn’t for the lack of trying. Everyone who played tried hard. But with only one real bowler being picked – Lasith Malinga, two spinners who were playing their first game and only Thisara and Angelo to bowl seam up, Sri Lanka were asking to be walloped. Everyone of my friends who I watched the game with knew that. BEFORE the toss. Why didn’t the Sri Lankan thing tank know it.

The hilarity is that we have almost as many bowling coaches as we do bowlers. In fact, as one of my friends remarked, if Marsh played yesterday, Australia would have more bowlers named ‘Mitchell’ than Sri Lanka have bowlers. I don’t understand it. Dilshan, Angelo and Thisara can certainly manage ten or more overs between them. Why we can’t have four bowlers to complement an in form batting line up I don’t know. Even chasing 377 yesteday Upul Tharanga was never going to come out at 7 and win us that game. Senanayake and Seekuge tried but they were faced by their limitations.

We don’t NEED seven batsmen. We don’t have a no. 7 like Klusener or Bevan that can win you a game on their own. We might as well play Thisara Perera in that slot, because chances are if at least two of the top 4 haven’t scored, we’re not going to get home anyway.

Play the bowlers. That way we don’t end up chasing 400. If we had a couple more bowling options we may have been chasing 320 and then who knows what would have happened. And this is something that can be changed NOW. There’s no point saying, IF Chandimal was fit – because he’s injured. There’s no point saying IF the team could field better – because they can’t. There’s no point saying, IF this and if that. What we can do is play the best players we’ve got in the right combinations and hope they come good.

If we’re playing the 7 specialists plust Thisara, then don’t go all soppy when we STILL lose a game by over 60 runs. Because we’re playing a tactic to bat other teams into the ground, and failing abjectly at that.

Don’t tolerate mediocrity, bad preparation, and flawed thinking. The more you go around saying ‘oh but it was a fun game and we put up fight’, the more you excuse the fundamental point that we lost. Losing is fine, if you’ve done your best. If you think this was our best, then you’re just mediocre and deserve everything you get.