Hitting the right note

SRI LANKA cricket is suddenly starting to flounder. From seemingly promising positions in the International Cricket Council's (ICC) Test and One-day International rankings they have slipped to below the halfway mark or thereabouts.

Their recent 1-6 loss to India sees them plummet down from second position to fifth in the one-day rankings. Their Test rankings is no better being placed sixth and it could easily become seventh if Pakistan who are currently occupying that position wins the current series against England.

India in the meanwhile are enjoying one of their best times after Greg Chappell took over as coach. They have lifted themselves from seventh to fourth in the one-day rankings and in the Test they occupy third spot after Australia and England.

A win for them in the current Test series against Sri Lanka which started on Friday will give them the runner-up position displacing England who is trailing 0-1 in the series in Pakistan. Currently nothing seems to be going right for the Sri Lankans.

For one thing they don't have luck on their side and try as hard as they might none of the three departments is functioning as well as they wanting it to be. Batting has been their strong point over the years and if that doesn't click its curtains for the Sri Lankans.

They are without their most experienced batsman Sanath Jayasuriya who has been left at home to recuperate from a shoulder injury and loss of form as a result of it.

In his absence it is the captain Marvan Atapattu who as the second most capped batsman in the side after Jayasuriya with 85 Test appearances who has to shoulder the responsibility and lead from the front.

He was not able to do that in the one-day series. So bad was his form as an opener that he was forced to drop down the order and although he made runs it did not help his side to win. A quality of a player is judged by how he performs when the chips are down and not when the going is good.

The current Test series against India gives not only Atapattu but several of his top order batsmen to perform and put enough runs on the board to allow the bowlers to get to work on the Indian batsmen.

Failure to do so could result in another series whitewash which would dent the team's already shattered morale further from which point the recovery part could be painfully slow.

Following series victories against weak sides like the West Indies and Bangladesh at home, Sri Lanka are being really tested in India.

The real crunch comes when they tour England in the first half of next summer for three Tests. That is when the ball will be swinging a great deal on the freshly laid pitches.

Talking of swing it was only the other day that Michael Tissera, the present manager of the Sri Lanka team was bemoaning the lack of swing bowlers in his side.

Tissera reminded us of the time when the country boasted of swing bowlers in the caliber of Ian Peiris, Darrel Lieverz and Mevan Peiris, all of whom played under his captaincy in the sixties.

Today the bowlers don't swing the ball but tend to reverse swing it like the reverse sweep. How times have changed. Tissera was of the opinion that today bowlers don't work hard enough towards achieving success with swing.

Change of guard in Indian cricket

Indian cricket has undergone a power shift with Agriculture Minister and head of the Mumbai Cricket Association Sharad Pawar becoming the new president of the richest cricket body in the world, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

Pawar's 20-11 win over Haryana's Ranbir Singh Mahendra ends Kolkata businessman Jagmohan Dalmiya's 21-year long stranglehold on India's cricket administration.

"Jaggu succumbs to Pawar play" screamed the headlines in the 'Deccan Chronicle' painting a perfect picture of what took place within the corridors of the Taj Bengal Hotel in Kolkata.

An experienced politician Pawar has an impressive track record of promoting kabbadi, wrestling, kho-kho and cricket in western India.

What we like to impress here is that India, a country with a population of 1.2 billion people had a voting strength at the AGM of only 34 among its states and associations.

Compare that figure with Sri Lanka whose population is almost six times less than India, but having a voting strength of 122! Something is radically wrong somewhere.

Long with the change of guard came changes in the Indian national selection committee with only two of the five selectors (Kiran More and V.B. Chandrasekhar) retaining their places from the existing committee.

The three ousted were those in support of Sourav Ganguly's inclusion in the first Test squad against Sri Lanka. With Dalmiya no longer in power speculation was rife over the future of Ganguly who also hails from Kolkata.

The former captain's inclusion in the squad caused quite a lot of controversy here. With Indian cricket currently on a high without Ganguly his return is seen by many as one that might spoil the wonderful atmosphere prevailing in the dressing room following his spat with coach Greg Chappell.

With no Dalmiya to give him the backing that he enjoyed when he was captain, the best option for 'the Prince of Kolkata' is to retire from the game gracefully.

Dalmiya's inability to let go of the reins when his time was up depleted whatever goodwill he had earned. Ganguly should not leave room for a similar exit. His contributions to Indian cricket cannot be forgotten, least of all his achievement as his country's most successful Test captain.