Share your thoughts: Sri Lanka’s disastrous T20 World Cup campaign

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6:56 pm - "Disband Sri Lanka cricket board, stop minister of sport poking his finger to the game, stop the madness of religious madness while playing . There should be one team for 20 overs and 50 overs if a player refuses give him the golden handshake finally do not praise cricketers as they are indispensable," says Nihal Dharmatileke. 

The problem in Sri Lankan cricket do appear institutional as well. 

5:40 pm - One of the biggest concerns for the team at the World Cup was the amount of travel they would have to undertake, travelling to four different cities to play their four group stage matches. 

The team is now in Florida, where they are stranded due to the heavy rains and flooding. 

They were scheduled to leave for Saint Lucia yesterday but the flight was cancelled. 

You can read more on that here. 

4:20 pm - Ryan comments about the lack of adaptability of the players 

"Do our team, coaches and administrators understand what T20 is? In T20, a bowler gets only 24 balls. One or two good batsmen will get 30-40 balls to their liking. There is no time to execute pre-planned stuff. Name of the game is adapt and respond. In this game there are no batters called openers, 1 down, 2 down etc. Because spinners open the bowling with medium pacers. Any bowler in T20 must be ready to bowl to any one, right handed or left handed batsman. A batsman must be ready to bat at any position 1-11. A fielder must be ready field at any location. Your opponents will creat all these situations within 20 overs for you to adapt. Our team has not been prepared for this. Just tell all,they should be flexible to do anything for the team. If refused, sack those. If reluctantly accept and underperform, just sack them. This is how Australians do this. I have seen this and studied them first hand. They don’t have any emotions. Game is more important than to accommodate player emotions."

2:50 pm -  Jay believes the Sports Minister has a role to play in all of this: 

"This sports minister is a joker. Each professional has specific job. Critics do the analysis and exposes the issues. Rather than countering the criticisms with facts and figures this joker asks whether critics can play cricket better than SL players. This guy is not worth to be a minister let alone sports minister. He better concentrate to his other playing skills. Just resign. Give this post to a educated decent person. We had a film critic called Jayvilal Willegoda. Once a film director asked him could you direct a better movie. He correctly shot back saying” it is your job to direct the film and if you can’t do a good job, just leave the industry to people who can do that job. My job is to do the constructive criticism. Leave that job to me”. This is what I have to say to Harin who has brain of the size a seed of bean."

2:45 pm - "Wrong attitude, lack of will and discipline. Coaching team needs to rethink how to motivate the players and strengthen discipline. Mahela J could be an option for the head coaching job!"...

...is zeylan nagathivu's comment on this all of this. 

1:20 pm - Don points to a lack of game awareness, distractions and money as a reason where the national team is at the moment. 

"We have to look at this holistically. Having cricketing skills only is not enough to win a game. Cricketers must have brains to analyse a situation, assess the opponent’s strategy, identify their weaknesses and strengths. Then communicate it to rest of the team to come up with a plan and execute on the ground at each minute. This is a team game. A batter must think if I get out now what would happen to the game. We have a bunch of low IQ including sports minister and administrators who think having cricket skills is enough. We need a tough master to train these guys mentality like going to a war. Remove all social interactions from players after reaching the training camp until the tournament is completed. Pay a minimum salary with a high performance payment. Remove any breaches code of conduct irrespective of seniority. Otherwise this bunch of jokers will be a laughing stock internationally."

12:44 pm - "Sri Lanka cricket needs more energy and lot of talents," Asela Gamini Bandara comments. 

12:33 pm - SLcricketfan chalks up the poor performances to a lack of pride.

"The current crop of players do not have the same passion and pride the cricketers from the previous era had. It takes discipline and being a little self less to represent your country on the international stage. The players and the specially the captain needs to realize when they represent the nation, they carry the hopes of the millions of fans watching them. Unfortunately it feels as if this team has very little regard to their fans. This could possibly also be due to the advent of franchise cricket. Their loyalties and performance has diverted to those bases that give them the largest monetary value."

12:20 pm - Mohammed Nihar has this to say:

 "The current Sri Lankan Team / The Board and the people who run it have always a truck load of excuses and no proper preparation of game plan to execute the game and manage its necessary resources. Cricket in Sri lanka is just a vanity project for them to mint money and the players ride on the perks without much commitment to performance. Anyone can tell all the ifs/buts and oohas ..end of the day we have gradually become and incompetent team from being the best in the world on any given day. Appalling, very Sad as we love the game of cricket and loved Sri lankan cricket and the team as die hard fans.....years ago we would lose many matches but we still loved the team since they sincerely played for country and glory and gave it all they had prepared die hard for the upcoming games. Dead batteries dont make no flashlights...."

That is a very interesting and apt analogy there Mohammad. Ultimately, it's the fans that suffer the most, holding out for hope.

11:50 am - A reader by the name of Kamal Geeganage comments:

"Its not about lack of Skills, Its about lack of Will. Whilst understanding administration issues, this and that. Players need to have attitudes towards the game and fighting spirit to win as unity. forget the country at least for themselves, they need to give a fight. I dont see that happening. Sometimes average players in a team with right attitudes is far better than having super class players with wrong attitudes. Their conduct is so poor, body language shows everything."

A valid point. Sri Lanka never seem to be short of talented cricketers.  

11:23 am - The team's performances have obviously led to questions being asked from the Sports Minister Harin Fernando, who made these comments at a press conference on Tuesday. 

Sports Minister Harin Fernando says some people, including some journalists, feel they can play better cricket than Wanidu Hasaranga, after the team lost the match against Bangladesh.

The Minister slammed “keyboard warriors” for being critical of the team, especially when they… pic.twitter.com/LThyeu6Af1

— DailyMirror (@Dailymirror_SL) June 12, 2024

11:15 am - A reader by the name of Sakya believes the performances at the World Cup, warrant drastic changes from the very top:

"Sri Lanka is not a team to look around for loosened escape latches depending on others performance. Comparetevely they are in the easiest of the groups, only real challenge was SA losing to them and beating the rest would have paved the way to the super 8 without nightmares. Poor performance all around cost the tournament. Merits Drastic changes from adminstration Management selectors down to the team"

10:20 am - As Mohandev puts it, very succinctly: 

"Problem with cricket"

9:27 am - A reader by the name of Asitha Jinadasa Pathirage comments: 

I am not a Cricketer. Still I think we batted relatively well or eually. What went wrong in the last match with Bangladesh is the Bowling of the last Very Critical 21 overs. 11 runs to be scored in 12 Balls. Why went for Pace Bowling. With that single Full Toss he hit a 6. Then it was nuts. Instead if we went for Spinners, SL would have had more control on batting and win the match. Poor Decision making.

Perhaps the captain, Wanindu Hasaranga, didn't think the Bangladesh innings would go all 20 overs, when he used up his frontline bowlers early, and may not have been the main reason for the loss, but yes, it did contribute to the defeat. 

9:20 am - "It's like the country going downhill."

Well, that's one way of putting it, Bandara. 

8:45 am - Another commentor, Uneed, says: 

"It is a wake up call and possibly a reflection of the reality we are faced with as a cricketing nation. We had to survive the qualifiers in 2022, never looked like a chance in 2023, based on form we are in the last quarter of the table in 2024 and have not qualified for 2025. That is who we are. It is up to us to decide how quickly we want to get up from the bottom or actually if we really want to. Fact is we have digressed from in the last decade and that can happen to anyone and a lack of success can compound other problems too like commitment and discipline. Lets not pretend it is not the case, lets accept we do not have world beaters and see how we can make change happen. Strong courageous and selfless leadership. A committed and hardworking playing group. And a loyal and patient supporter base. 10 years from now, lets promise ourselves...we will be the world beaters we can be."

Hard to disagree with those senitments. Sri Lanka have had successes in the 10 years since winning the 2014 T20 World Cup, but at World Cups, where they were once strong competition and regularly made the semi-finals, they have simply not been up to mark. Where has it all gone wrong for Sri Lanka?

8:13 am - We have our first comment and its from a user going be the name of Prince Kevitiyagala, who has commented: 

"Lot of “ifs” for srilanka to qualify for the super 8.the biggest among them is can we beat Netherlands,given our lackluster performance.My honest opinion is to get to the super 8 we should have played good cricket,and we did not,therefore we don’t deserve to be there. We will be cannon fodder in case we get to super 8"

8:02 am - A quick primer -- Sri Lanka lost its first two T20 World Cup 2024 matches, to South Africa and Bangladesh, and have been fighting to stay alive in the tournament since. A win over Nepal yesterday, in their third group stage game, would have had at least given them a chance of qualifying for the Super Eight Stage, but that match was washed out, significantly reducing those chances instead. While a cursory look at the points table and simple maths might suggest Sri Lanka are out the running, there is still an outside chance, a mathematical one, that required intervention from the weather, that they can still qualify for the next round of the tournament. It's the hope that kills. 

If you want to know more on how Sri Lanka can still qualify for the next round of the tournament, this article will enlighten you.

8:00 am - A very good morning to our readers and welcome to this live discussion blog on Daily Mirror Online, on Sri Lanka's T20 World Cup 2024 campaign.

We would like to encourage you to share your thoughts on how Sri Lanka has performed at the tournament, and we will share them as the day goes along and keep this conversation rolling. 

 

 

 

 

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