No mystery now, Sri Lanka fight to master conventional spin bowling

NEW DELHI: First up on Saturday morning, Virat Kohli tried to put a lid on the growing murmurs that his team was disrespecting the Sri Lankans by using this series as a preparation for next month’s South Africa tour.
“Our mindset of preparation has been taken in a wrong way. We don’t want to take anything away from our opposition here. Even in South Africa, it will be about the conditions,” Kohli made his statement after electing to bat, expecting his openers to be best challenged on Day One.
More than this series being deemed as a conditioning camp for India, Sri Lanka’s submission in the field could not be veiled.In fact, when Cheteshwar Pujara casually flicked Lahiru Gamage to Sadeera Samarawickrama at leg slip, it seemed to be the most fascinating part of the day’s play provided by Sri Lanka. “It wasn’t pre-planned. Probably Chandimal saw that Pujara was playing a bit in the air and it worked,” Sri Lanka’s bowling coach Rumesh Ratnayake said. His bowlers clearly relied more on luck on Saturday.
Offspinner Dilruwan Perera, 34, did pip Muttiah Muralitharan to the tag of fastest to 100 wickets for Sri Lanka on Saturday but his struggles against quality batting continued.
Not even left-arm wrist spinner Lakshan Sandakan, perceived as the only surprise element in their ranks, bowled on the desired spot till the last half-hour of the day. The two stumpings – of Murali Vijay and Ajinkya Rahane – came off googlies. “I would have liked him to bowl his googlies in the first two sessions. Maybe it’s a matter of confidence. He could have tried bowling from different sides of the stumps,” Ratnayake remarked.
Over the years, Sri Lankan cricket evolved as a powerhouse riding on the unconventional varieties of finger-spin bowling. But with ICC going all out with its mission against ‘chucking’ from 2014, most finger spinners have lost their bite. Incidentally, Sri Lankan cricket started unravelling right at that time.
The search for the wily veteran Rangana Herath’s successor continues. Tharindu Kaushal, emerged as an option, but has not done enough. Akila Dananjaya did wreak havoc in one of the recent ODIs, but the Indians have decoded him pretty well.
“The next generation of spinners has been encouraged to bowl the conventional off-spin and the round-arm deliveries,” former Sri Lanka opener Avishka Gunawardene, who was here as the batting coach for Under-19 Sri Lankan team, told TOI during the U-19 World Cup in Dhaka in February 2016.
Now that Sri Lankan cricket is fighting a difficult battle to stay in the top league, maybe it’s time to get out of the obsession to find the mystery element in their spinners. As Ratnayake stated, they need to master the guile of conventional spin bowling.