Cricket World Welcomes Baz-Ball

By Harsha Amarasinghe 

Sarri-ball perhaps is quite a popular term in football, but the cricket world was taken by surprise with England’s stunning rise playing Baz-ball.

England has had a successful start under their new head coach Brendon McCullum nicknamed ‘Baz’ who was known to be a very aggressive wicketkeeper batsman during his time. As a coach, the Kiwi appears to have a very similar approach to the game.
Sarri-ball in football is a system introduced by the Italian coach Maurizio Sarri in which his team would have one deep-lying midfielder running the game with players often look to complete short passes in the build-up, which was a different approach to most of the other football strategies.

Similarly, England’s Baz-ball is quite different to the way Test cricket was played for a long period of time. It basically means trying to be busy at the wicket in complete contrast to the conventional methods such as taking time to settle in or frustrating the bowlers by blocking everything.

England were mighty successful against New Zealand in the recent times utilizing the Baz-ball to a great effect.
On the other hand, it is a system that works perfectly for the English team with so many attacking players such as Jonny Bairstow, Ben Stokes and Sam Billings in the middle order.

Bairstow in particular has been in the form of his life smashing three centuries in his last five Test innings. When questioned about Baz-ball by the former England Captain Nasser Hussain, Bairstow explained it is not about smashing every single ball, but looks to be optimistic and shift the momentum against the bowlers.
Sri Lanka’s Spin Woes

Sri Lanka spinners were humiliated in what turned out to be very embarrassing defeat against Australia in the first Test match at Galle.

Galle is Sri Lanka’s Gabba because it’s a nightmare for foreign teams – particularly for the non-subcontinental sides. But the Sri Lankan spinners destroyed the huge uplift of the entire nation by displaying one of the worst ever spin bowing performances at Galle.

When Dasun Shanaka and co pulled off a brilliant ODI series win, it certainly gave the Test side a much needed confident boost against one of the best in the world, but all of that vanished within two and half days following a very heavy defeat. If not for rain, that game could have ended inside two days.
While Sri Lanka’s batting was very poor in the second innings, their total of 212 in the first innings was a decent effort on a rank turner, but the moment the Sri Lankan spinners let Australia score 321 for their first innings, the game was done and dusted.

Lasith Embuldeniya apparently finds it hard to cope with pressure. Spin bowling coach Piyal Wijetunge says it’s a mental issue and nothing to do with the bowling technique. His performance was horrendous against Australia and a performance like that costed Tharindu Kaushal his career.
Ramesh Mendis was the most successful Sri Lankan spinner in terms of wickets, but if you are conceding over 3.5 runs per over on a wicket like that, you are not doing very well.
Although Sri Lanka played Jeffrey Vanderaay as a third spinner, the highlight of his performance was when Pat Cummins smashed him out of the ground for a huge six.

Their performance compared to the limited over trio, Wanindu Hasaranga, Maheesh Theekshana and Dunith Wellalage was an epic failure.

The likes of Mendis, Praveen Jayawickrama and Embuldeniya have established themselves as Sri Lanka’s premier spinners following their performances against teams like Bangladesh and West Indies. Even in the most recent tour to Bangladesh and India they were bang average.

As certain commentators correctly pointed out, it’s a shock that players like Maheesh Theekshana and Dunith Wellalage have not been considered for Test cricket. Just because they haven’t played enough first-class matches doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability to perform in the longer format. Sri Lanka will have to lose another ten, fifteen games for the selectors to realize it and in the meantime if Embuldeniya bags a five-fer against Bangladesh somewhere along the line, he’d be the first choice for the next fifteen years.