A busy year for cricket

By Kasturiarachchi Warnakulasuriya

CRICKET: The year 2008 is going to be a heavy schedule for Sri Lanka in cricket. There's no time to waste. By February 5, the Tri-Nation : Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Australia series will be important for the Lankans are much prominence will be placed on the local team.

The first match for the year will be on February 12 in Canberra.

Sri Lanka will have to face peculiar type of West Indies in Tests and 'one-dayers' in March and April.

All in all, Sri Lanka has to play 34 matches in 2008 in both versions of the game. This is of course a very tight and strenuous schedule. Injuries has been the order of the day in world cricket due to these tight schedules.

So, reliable reserves should be on call with good match practice without playing the usual "gambling business" to choose from.

Sri Lanka's biggest problem earlier was to search for fast bowlers. Now it's on the opening pair of seasoned campaigners who were entrusted with this job. Marvan Atapattu and Sanath Jayasuriya have bade farewell to Test cricket. Finding a good opening combination for Tests and matching a reliable opener for Sanath Jayasuriya, is yet to be solved.

Will Sanath be asked to bat at No. 5 slot and two new openers to be found, will be another suggestion.

Then to find replacements in the middle order will have to be carried out very smoothly because it is the usual practice that when Sri Lanka lose key batsmen, there are no reliable players to fill in the gaps.

Then in the case of pace bowlers, the grouping the young fast bowlers to deliver the goods on the right line and length has to be well scrutinised and well planned out, Senior paceman Dilhara Fernando will have to be carefully looked after.

In the last few tournaments, the team had kept faith in luck by winning the toss. If the toss was lost, it may be the turning point or sometimes the wrong decision whether to bat or bowl was the reason for failure. These things should not be excuses.

Cricketers must be ready to shoulder the responsibilities of playing intelligently whether the toss is won or not. Rising to the occasion intellingetly and consistently is the most important aspect of cricketers.

Today we have a capable man at the helm to solve all these problems. That man is none other than Arjuna Ranatunga - the longest surviving cricket captain of the world with lots of experience under his sleeves.

As President of the Cricket Board, Arjuna has lots of experience in him and he will no doubt can be relied upon to get the best out of the cricketers. There is no doubt that Ranatunga will work out a plan to get the best out of the team and his officials and put aside all the mistakes made in the past by various interim committees and make it good this time.

The cricket loving public are looking ahead for a good time both on and off the field.