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Comment by Dr. Elmo Rodrigopulle

International cricket will once again come alive here when Michael Vaughan's English cricketers arrive for a One-Day and Test series. There was a bit of uncertainly with the sudden change in the political situation. But at the time of writing everything is tickety boo and all is set for an enthralling series.

It is every cricket fan's prayer that the weather gods will relent and allow cricket to be played in all its splendour and glory.

England will be here after rolling over the Bangladeshis in the Tests and the One-Dayers, while the Lankans who have had no competitive cricket for the last four to five months are hard at training wanting to strangle the English.

England, from the time they gave the game to the world, are renowned for their grit and determination. They have moulded their game on the belief that if a game cannot be won, then it must be saved at all costs.

Thus it won't be easy beating them.

The England batsmen showed on their previous tour that they have it in them to stall their tormentor Muttiah Muralitheran. Their play has been to thrust their front foot forward and make Muralitheran look ordinary. If they can adopt this ploy successfully this time too, then they will certainly have the advantage and they can also go back with a series victory like they did last time round. England are certainly not the beauties of world cricket. That crown goes to the Australians whose batting is eye-catching, bowling teasing and fielding attractive.

England batsmen will not throw away their wickets with rash shots. As they have been doing in Bangladesh, it will be dogged, time consuming with a view to building a big total and putting the game out of reach of their opponents and then probing for victory. John Dyson our coach would certainly have been working on the Lankans trying to get them to play the kangaroo style of cricket, which style is all about winning.

We hope that the Lankans would respond and play the game that would bring in the spectators, because the style that the English play send spectators scurrying out of the ground. In Trescothick, Vaughan, Hussain and Thrope they have batsmen who can light up proceedings. But surprisingly they tend to be too defensive. The player to watch would no doubt be Andrew Flintoff.

The English believe that in Flintoff they are seeing the second coming of an Ian Botham. Like Botham, Flintoff can turn defeat into victory with his vicious seamers and bludgeoning of the bowling. He has done this and the South Africans will vouch for it. Whether Flintoff could take Muralitheran and Vaas to the cleaners would be interesting to watch.

Another aspect worth watching would be how the two captains concept which sees Hashan Tillekeratne and Marvan Atapattu as the top actors perform. To attack from the first ball and put pressure on their opponents should be their approach. If this is done and persisted with, there is no way that victory could elude them.

They must also remember that a match is not won or lost till the final ball is bowled.

World Cup Rugby

We do not profess to be rugby experts to comment on the run of play and analyse the action in the World Cup rugby tournament in Australia, but it is the consensus that the best of rugby is on.

Ruggerites and rugby fans have to wait for four years, like in cricket to see the best teams in the world compete in healthy rivalry. We leave it to our rugby experts Y. C. Chang and Sharm de Alwis to give their views on what is happening out in the middle, in the World Cup that has been tagged by critics as one of the best organised.

Chang, incidentally was the stormy petrel of rugby here. As a player, administrator, organiser and finally writer he is par excellence. De Alwis is an expert in his own way and is a storehouse of knowledge.

Chang and De Alwis have teamed up to give our readers the best of rugby happening here and abroad. To the World Cup and while the best teams have qualified to scrum down for the plum, the semi-final between Australia and New Zealand will have all the niceties of a final and it is a pity that the teams could not meet in the final proper.

While Multivision showed the action from the preliminaries and will continue till the final, Sri Lanka's Channel Eye along with the local sponsors of rugby, Caltex quenched the thirst of fans here by telecasting the action from Australia from the quarter-final stages. There is little use of priding ourselves of having modern technology if we are unable to see the best of action that is taking place abroad.

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