Sri Lanka’s wonderfully inventive collection of spinners are combining to make up a winning hand against England, but their potential impact in the World Cup is harder to assess
Andrew Fidel Fernando07-Dec-2014Sri Lanka revels in being a little weird. This manifests in Colombo’s bus drivers, who alternate so forcefully between the brake and accelerator that their vehicles are practically twerking their way through the city’s streets. Or in the long, loud howls with which market vendors advertise their wares, their language sometimes so warped it sounds more like a whale song, than the native Sinhala or Tamil.There is weirdness in the cricket team as well. While most other ODI outfits are lining up their fast men for World Cup duty in New Zealand and Australia, Sri Lanka have built up a pile of slow-bowlers. In each match they have played this series, Angelo Mathews has had 40 possible overs of spin in his ranks, with at least one more frontline slow-bowler unused in the reserves.Two days ago, the selectors even dropped a rope down to extract chinaman bowler Lakshan Sandakan from a domestic pool teeming with rippers and tweakers. His inclusion means the hosts have now collected the spin-bowling full house in their squad.Legspinner Jeevan Mendis, not the strongest bowler in the series so far, is the 10 in Sri Lanka’s card set. Tillakaratne Dilshan is the Jack-of-all-trades, having opened the bowling last week, and now been called on at the death as well. Ajantha Mendis is like a Marie Antoinette: imposing on his day, ripe for satire on others, while, with all the guile of a wizened politician, Rangana Herath is the king of the troupe. If there has to be an ace-in-the-hole, it might just be Sandakan, whom few have seen, and was spoken of by his captain as needing to be unveiled “at the right time”.On a Khettarama surface so slow that Eoin Morgan found it hard to describe, Sri Lanka’s phalanx of spinners settled down into their best collective work of their series. Herath fittingly led the way, floating balls up bravely from his first over, safe in the knowledge that his tormentor Moeen Ali had already been cajoled into a loose shot by a colleague. England’s best batsman, James Taylor, was shown Herath’s range of sliders and grippers in the Powerplay overs, and strove from then on to see him out safely. Others in England’s top order largely followed suit.The crowd, though, did not take Herath quite so seriously. Five weeks of fitness work in September and October had done little to relieve Herath’s gait, and playful cheers rung out whenever he dove in the field or barrelled after the ball.The stadium was louder still, when he made his three big blows. Joe Root had an arm ball whiz past him and onto the stumps. Jos Buttler, Wednesday’s man-of-the-match, was dismissed trying to hit the first boundary off Herath’s bowling, in his ninth over. Then Chris Woakes was done the most emphatically of the three – he aimed a heave to the legside, but tossing it up, Herath got the ball to dip and slip, missing Woakes’ bat by a distance, but not failing to hit the stumps.Moeen Ali’s threat was curbed by Tillakaratne Dilshan’s offspin•AFPDilshan had been the man to flummox Moeen second ball, and ego thus boosted, Dilshan cringed and gasped through much of his ten overs, habitually sending his hands to head and pretending the batsman had been nearly out, even when he had hit it well.Mathews’ reliance on Dilshan this series is further confirmation that he is much better than just a part-timer now, and to go with Moeen’s wicket, Dilshan also scalped Ravi Bopara – England’s other form batsman of the series. He got Eoin Morgan’s wicket off the final ball of the innings too, though given his celebration of that dismissal, he was possibly the only person in the stadium able to disregard that Morgan had plundered 18 off the first 5 balls.Ajantha Mendis, meanwhile, continued in his characteristically enigmatic vein, bouncing back to take three wickets of his own, after having been smeared around Hambantota on Wednesday. Among his haul was the prize wicket of Taylor, who misjudged a carrom ball and sent a leading edge up to cover, on 90.”In Hambantota, none of our spinners did that well,” vice-captain Lahiru Thirimanne said. “But we sat down and planned a lot after that. A lot of England’s batsmen don’t play well when the ball is turning. We wanted to play three spinners, cut down the width we had given, and we did that today. It wasn’t that easy. Although the pitch was slow, it wasn’t turning that much.”Sri Lanka’s liberal use of spin outlines their approach to this series: they are more interested in winning now, than honing in wholeheartedly on that World Cup. It’s unlikely they can afford to have 40 overs of spin on hand in New Zealand and Australia. England, meanwhile, played no specialist spinners in this match, with an eye to that tournament.The hosts’ disposition to be different is paying off for now. Only time will tell how they will fare when the decks they play on don’t quite suit the cards they have in hand right now.
