{"id":41509,"date":"2015-02-14T02:28:55","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T09:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=41509"},"modified":"2015-02-14T02:28:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T09:28:55","slug":"poor-choice-of-bowlers-and-captaincy-costed-the-first-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/02\/14\/poor-choice-of-bowlers-and-captaincy-costed-the-first-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Poor Choice of Bowlers and Captaincy Costed the First Game"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>Team Sri Lanka played to lose. It was obvious from the very onset. Team selection was not appropriate for the match. It was not only the selectors that picked the team of the day; it was the captain in consultation with the coach and the selectors. The smart captain who thought it best to field first is so wrong. Given the likelihood of further showers, the right thing to do was to bat first.<\/p>\n<p>Lousy captaincy was on display on many other fronts as well. Bowling changes were not made as appropriate. When the first two bowlers were expensive, they were continued giving away runs and allowing the opponent to build partnerships. Good bowlers were not used enough and expensive bowlers were used extensively. This is one deficiency the current captain has displayed in most of his games. If this continues, Team Sri Lanka has absolutely no chance of advancing to the semis. Bowlers were not encouraged or advised. They were left alone to keep doing the same mistakes.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately a key characteristic that runs through Matthews, Murali and Arnold is they don\u2019t perform at their best in crucial matches. Matthews and Arnold have been more worried about their bowling and batting averages and in the case of Matthews, captaincy success percentage than winning matches. Thirimanne must be appointed as the ODI captain. Change in captaincy in T20 format succeeded.<\/p>\n<p>Mahela has reached his retirement. He must be relieved of playing for the country. He may score the occasional half century but that may come too infrequently. Malinga has lost his firepower and there is no use playing him either. However, these players are still lethal against minnows and Bangladesh and they should play against them. Three catches were dropped which highlight the need to improve fielding.<\/p>\n<p>Unless these changes are made immediately, team fortunes will not change. It may only be the start but this bad start foretells what\u2019s ahead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dilrook Kannangara Team Sri Lanka played to lose. It was obvious from the very onset. Team selection was not appropriate for the match. It was not only the selectors that picked the team of the day; it was the captain in consultation with the coach and the selectors. The smart captain who thought it best [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}