5 areas Sri Lanka need to work on to be more competitive
It was a sight to behold for the Sri Lankan fans when Arjuna Ranatunga led the island nation to the World Cup title in 1996. With that title-winning campaign, Sri Lanka had proclaimed themselves as one of the major giants of the game in the coming time ahead. However, the quality of Sri Lankan Cricket has started degrading in recent times and has been on a steady decline ever since.
But, where did the downfall start? Precisely with the successive retirement of experienced heads like Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene, Muttiah Muralitharan and others. Their retirement, all at once, left a massive void in the Lankan ranks. Lack of enough experienced players in the side meant the absence of a guiding force to show the youngsters the path. So, the current crop of players hasn’t grown much.
However, that is how international cricket works. They have to move forward shrugging away the disappointment of their heavy whitewash across all formats against India and an ODI series whitewash against Pakistan. What they need to do is to draw inspiration from the little silver linings they have; something like the miraculous Test series victory against Pakistan in the UAE.
Apart from that they also need to work on a few areas in order to be more competitive against other sides. Let us have a look at some of the areas Sri Lanka need to work on.
#1) Temperament and patience
The current crop of Lankan players lacks proper temperament. None of the Lankan batsmen except Dimuth Karunaratne at present have the patience in them to play the long innings in any format of the game. Even in T20Is, batsmen need to mix aggression with caution. But, the Lankan players know only a one way road of slogging it out in T20Is. And when it comes to the other formats, the same story follows as they lack the patience to build up an innings.
They have the habit of throwing their wickets away. Fancy shots lead to their downfall more often than not. This is the area they need to work on. Patience and temperament are the two things they need to build in order to be successful in the international arena.