In a rather innovative and brave move, Sri Lanka Cricket Board (SLC) has launched Super Provincial Four Day Tournament, in order to improve the quality of domestic cricket. However, the upgraded Competitiveness of the tournament has Expoesd the shortcomings of the decades old Club Structure and at the same time has also exposed those mediocre players, who used to grab loads of wickets and piles on the runs for their clubs.
The first two matches of the SLC’s ambitious Super Provincial Four Day Tournament ended in tame draws. In the first match, between Team Galle and Team Colombo, A total of 986 runs were scored and even three innings couldn’t complete in four days. In the match between Team Dambula and Team Kandy, staggering 1321 runs were scored.
Roshen Silva made his highest first class score (231*), while Lahiru Thirimane, Mahela Udawatte and even Sachitra Senanayake scored hundreds.
However, in a big contrast to club cricket, the highest run getters and wicket takers were failed embarrassingly in a rather high quality cricket competition.
“The first two matches were eye opener for many players, who used to score loads of runs in club cricket structure. Almost all were big failures in the two matches of super provincial tournament” a top SLC official told Cricket Age on the term of animosity.
Especially, the spinners were in much more worse situation. As batsmen kept piling on runs, almost all the spinners of all four teams looked ordinary. They lacked the wicket taking ability on sporting pitches and were not able to pick wickets, as they used to be. In both the matches, fast bowlers outclassed spinners, which is a rare sight in Sri Lanka domestic cricket.
“The main problem with Sri Lanka domestic cricket is that when spinners plays for their clubs, they plays on turning wickets…to be honest, absolutely rubbish wickets. So, they takes dozens of wickets. However, they plays on sporting pitches, like SLC provided in the first two matches of the Provincial tournament, they fails miserably” a prominent person in Sri Lanka cricket, who himself has been associated with clubs for decades, told Cricket Age.
And, that is the main reason, Sri Lanka always looks for freak bowlers. In their glorious history, Bowlers like Muttiah Muralitharan, Ajantha Mendis, Lasith Malinga were more successful than others, as they had extraordinary things in their bowling.
However, at the same time, the first two matches of the tournament also provided a path to Sri Lanka Cricket. The super four provincial tournament is indeed a good step, and with sporting wickets, SLC took another right step to improve the domestic cricket structure.
For their part, selectors were also present during both the matches and they closely monitored the new beginning of the domestic structure.
