It’s not surprising then that the pitches across this tiny island have taken to the character of its people and climes just like everything else, including the peak-hour traffic. For, they too — and that’s the case everywhere from Galle to Kandy to the many cricket centres around Colombo — can tend to be more on the side of the soporific than the sprightly.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t produce interesting cricket. They make for maybe not enthralling but certainly intriguing action. It’s a fight of attrition but one with many fascinating twists and turns from start to finish.
And that is the most characteristic feature about Test cricket in Sri Lanka — the fact that no team is out of the game till the time it starts slipping into a defeatist attitude. For, here, you don’t give up on making a comeback till all your cards have been laid on the table and the opposition is holding all aces. Maybe you still give it a shot in vain.
To stay put, though, calls for extreme determination, diligence and the ability to graft it out session after session in often unrelenting heat and humidity, where both batsmen and bowlers want to do nothing but to retire to the pavilion. It’s not about really connecting with the knockout blow, it’s about measuring up your opponent, and dragging him till Round 12, and then KO’ing him with a soft jab.
It’s an art that Virat Kohli & Co will have to learn quickly if they harbour any hopes of making a fist of things against a Sri Lankan outfit charged to overcome the reversals against Pakistan.
On the face of it, it doesn’t look a task that will be established easily. Like they showed in Australia, the young Indians are not naturally prone to play the waiting game — being good at which wins more Tests in Sri Lanka than individual brilliance like Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq proved recently. They haven’t played in the subcontinent since late 2013 or in the post-Tendulkar era. Nor do they play Ranji Trophy on a regular basis to develop the art of attrition.
Vijay’s experience valuable
In recent times, only Murali Vijay has shown the nous and the temperament to spend time at the crease and build on it. He is also the only one among the batsmen on tour to have even played a Test match on Sri Lankan soil — he played two out of three during the last tour in 2010 — with the rest yet to get a taste of it.
Not to forget the fragility of the middle-order, which without a stable No.3 could come under extreme duress if the home team spinners can get their act straight.
History isn’t on the side of the Indians either. Despite the seemingly similar subcontinent conditions across the Indian Ocean, rarely has an Indian team found life easy in Sri Lanka. They’ve not only won only 4 out of 18 Tests played here, their bowlers in particular have if anything been found out on these pitches.
Only the West Indians have a worse record with the ball here than India. In three decades of touring, only on five occasions has an Indian bowler snared a five-wicket haul here. In comparison, the Pakistanis — buoyed by leg-spinner Yasir Shah’s bagful of scalps recently — have 18 five-wicket hauls in 23 Tests. The inexperience of the Indian bowling is stark, with nobody except Harbhajan Singh and Ishant Sharma having played here before.
Their averages of 46.92 and 49.61 respectively don’t make their previous experiences really stand out either. The pacers, Varun Aaron and Umesh Yadav, struggled with their consistency over in Australia, where going for the kill with every ball can be a trait that is acknowledged even if not appreciated, and it remains to be seen how they change their tactics accordingly to match the demands of Sri Lanka. To boot, in Kohli, India have an inexperienced captain who in the handful of Tests he’s led the team has not really been prone to tire oppositions out, rather opting and bellowing for their obliteration.
“Our desire to push the game along has to be suppressed sometimes, even though we may not exactly enjoy it,” is how Ricky Ponting, who led Australia to a series win here in 2004, had described the art of triumphing over odds in Sri Lanka. It’s a thought that the Indian captain and his entire team not only need to acknowledge but to adopt as their mantra over the next four weeks, lest they get tripped up by the deceptively calming air of Sri Lanka.
(indianexpress.com)
