Daniel Alexander
Sri Lanka’s World Cup discards were put to the sword in India on the first day of their four-day match yesterday at a venue called Belgaum. Picked into what is called a Sri Lanka A team, the discards conceded a total of 376 for the loss of just one wicket as India A openers PK Panchal and AR Easwaran plundered 358 runs for the first wicket. The most hammered bowler was Akila Dhananjaya who conceded 102 runs without taking a wicket as he sent down 21 overs.Panchal made 160 while Easwaran remained unbeaten on 189 at the close on the first day.
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Looks like it is a blessing in disguise for Sri Lanka to drop Akila for the WC. Look at the A team squad I was expecting them to perform well and win against this Indian team. Theres a lot of unknown names in the Indian team for me but this Sri lanka A team are mostly players who have played their handful of international matches.
Yes you are correct Suren. We must be thankful to Asantha for giving preference to Dhananjaya over Akila when everyone was preferring Akila to be in the WC squad. However DDS is not the best of spinners that we have played in a WC. Talking of our team composition DDS is a must player as we have only two experienced spinners in the squad. All other teams play minimum of two spinners to have a good team balance on the bowling with more variety. If we do not play DDS we will have to play 5 fast bowlers which is not a good idea. In my opinion the best position for DDS is no 3,4 or 5. As he is not a power hitter it will be a waste sending him at 6 or 7. In the next warm up match this experiment can be done.
Why I said that we have only two experienced spinners in our squad is due to the fact that both Vandersay (apart from not having any previous ODI experience, he demonstrated in the first warm up match that he is not going be a threatening leg spinner for us) and Malinda (beside not having any previous ODI experience, he has not bee given any opportunity to bowl in the Scotland & first warm up match) seem to be mere passengers in our squad & this situation will leave us with a depleted squad of only 13 players who are capable to play in the coming 9 WC matches. So man management of DDS (for occupying in the most appropriate position in the line up) to get the best out of him as an aggressive batsman who can score runs achieving a SR of at least 90 to 100%.