Used to scrapping for spinners’ crumbs, Sri Lanka’s seam quartet tuck into Oval feast
Andrew Fidel Fernando08-Sep-2024Put yourself in the boots of a Sri Lanka men’s Test quick, and you might reflect the job’s really not as glamorous as it could be. There are lorry loads of pride to swallow. At home, frontline spinners tend to look at you without perhaps the amount of respect you expect as the group of cricketers who most put their bodies on the line for the team. machan. aney If this sounds like an exaggeration, take a peek at this scorecard, from Sri Lanka’s second Test against South Africa, at the SSC.Look through that baby and clock that Suranga Lakmal, Sri Lanka’s second-highest seam-bowling wicket-taker was captain in that game (stand-in skipper after Rangana Herath turned the job down, obviously). Also spot that he was so resigned to his superfluousness, that the man did not bowl himself at all in the first innings, and claimed for himself only two token overs in the second innings, long after the spinners had set the team on course to an almost inevitable victory.Pricks.Hoovering up crumbs that fall from the spinners’ table, praying you’ll be one of the two quicks (sometimes fewer) selected for one of the five-ish home Tests this year, hoping you’ll get a decent bowl in these games, jokingly suggesting to the board that you’d like them to be at a venue that’s kind to quicks (the P Sara Oval, basically), then swallowing tears again when you turn up on Test-match morning and the pitch is drier than your least-favourite aunty’s . This is your lot in life.Related
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You trek for years in that desert, and then, in the week ahead of a Test match in England, you hear whispers that they might play four of you in one team. Four! It’s like all the Avurudu, Puthandu, Eid or Christmas celebrations have been rolled into one. You rock up and the ground and it’s cloudy on day one. The coin goes into the air, your captain wins it, and you and your three friends get to bowl.In the previous match, you’d had to bowl under sunshine, bat under clouds, and the only thing the team didn’t ask you to do for the experienced batters was carry them to the crease on palanquins.But Sri Lanka is nothing if not a team unbound to convention. The thinking was flipped on its head this week. Now, it was Angelo Mathews, 111 Tests in, running in on audibly creaky legs to prime himself for sending down some overs in this Test, with a view to relieving frontline seamers. It was Dhananjaya de Silva and Kamindu Mendis putting themselves in the frame of mind to bowl overs if they had to.Lahiru Kumara celebrates the wicket of Dan Lawrence•Gareth Copley/Getty ImagesSri Lanka’s seamers didn’t fully repay the faith on day one of this Test, letting England screech to 221 for 3 after 44.1 overs. But please understand, these are players to whom so little faith has ever been afforded, they’d never had much to repay.What they’ve done on day two, when the team took out 7 for 104, and day four, in which the seamers claimed 10 for 156, is basically a party. If it isn’t quite anti-establishment joint, then why does it feel so much like one?Maybe it’s down to the personnel. When Lahiru Kumara and Asitha Fernando, two of the most expressive Sri Lanka quicks were battling at No. 10 and 11 early in the day, Olly Stone was hurling bouncers at them. When Kumara ducked one, Asitha called out at him, the stump mic broadcasting this around the world: “Let’s let this d***face have it when we’re bowling.” (The Sinhalese swear Asitha used doesn’t translate to anything comparable in English, but here’s our best attempt.)When Stone came out at 82 for 7, Asitha – who stands almost a foot shorter than England’s Josh Hull, by the way – took it upon himself to set an aggressive leg-side field and bowl almost exclusively angry-as-all-hell deliveries to him. There is a decent argument that searching for his wicket with deliveries in the good old channel outside off stump would have served Sri Lanka better here. But then, when else would you ever get to see a Sri Lanka fast bowler taste this particular flavour of fun?Asitha deserves more love than the rest, because he has been relentless right through the series. Never low on energy even when Bazball England crashed over him. Far from the quickest. Not the most skilled. And yet, the most prolific bowler on either side with 17 dismissals, that seemed more crafted out of intensity than anything else.Kumara brought his explosive pace to bear. For years, his spells have been as untamed and unpredictable, running wild, in all the best ways as well as the worst. His seven overs on Sunday was like watching The Hulk trying to fit into the robes and lifestyle of monk, finding edges – three nicks to the keeper, and one inside-edge into the stumps – all to balls travelling in that channel.Vishwa Fernando trapped Joe Root lbw in his first over•Andy Kearns/Getty ImagesVishwa Fernando bowled maybe the most impressive Sri Lanka spell of the series, running in close to the stumps, angling balls towards slip, swinging many in prodigously, letting others run away with his arms. No less a behemoth than Joe Root was trapped lbw with one that tailed in. Harry Brook perished much the same way. Jamie Smith, who charged at Sri Lanka late and cracked 67 off 50, was also caught at midwicket because of late movement Vishwa generated.Milan Rathnayake, having given plenty through his first series – even if his call-up had been something of a surprise – contributed a wicket himself as well, trapping Gus Atkinson lbw.On overseas tours, especially in places such as South Africa, New Zealand, England, and Australia, so much is suddenly expected of Sri Lanka quicks, and so much about them – their inexperience, their averages, their skill – is maligned. Given the surfeit of injuries they frequently stuffer on tour, people at websites such as this may even have described certain fast bowlers as having “big hamstring-tear energy”. We should not name names.On September 8, at The Oval, four Sri Lanka quicks backed each other up, and under sunny skies, found vicious swing with the Dukes ball, delivered tourniquet-tight spells, were collectively intense, and took all 10 wickets inside 34 overs. Take a peek at that scorecard. Not a single over from any bowler but these four was required. A phenomenon so rare, so against-all-odds, you can’t help but behold it as a thing of small wonder.
