very well done! we are proud of you

sri lankan cricket team, which did a great job in proudly flying the sri lankan flag on the way to the final, did the same in the final even though they lost. they showed great character in never giving up to last.

great work and thanks.

congratulations to australia! gilchrist in particular. he made the difference and we did not have any answer, though we tried our best.

we will have to wait four more years to taste kangaroos meat it seems. grrr... here i was waiting to take big bite of that :-)

as for the rain delay, bad light, etc.
first , i think 38 overs was the wrong length after the delayed start.
it is clear that even without the second brief rain interruption, or any cloud cover, 38x2 overs could not have been bowled before darkness fell. they should have reduced the no of overs further from the start or carried the match to reserve day if they wanted a longer game.

secondly, it was certainly ridiculous to start after the second interruption without formally reducing the overs and setting ( and informing all concerned ) the new target .

that second interruption and the confusion was partly responsible for our loss imo.

thirdly it was wrong of australians to celebrate before the match was formally over. i am not quite sure but according to a friend of mine umpires cannot stop a match bc of bad light.( if anyone know better pl correct me) as such even though they made a mess of it, umpires were at least following the law.

all that left a bad taste

but it was great match as far as cricket is concerned and australia won it fair and square.

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ps
terrorist pussies were up to their usual tricks tonight. typical behavior. what more can you expect? does anyone really think talking peace and appeasement of such people will work? esp. when we saw tonight the results of that part appeasement, the cfa? they will carry out attacks even when they are reduced to handful. a sustainable peace that respects the principles of democracy, justice, human rights, and freedom, and ltte as it is now, are simply not compatible. as such there is only one way to go.
anyway will write more about this later

saturday night here and there

sweat dust and pluck
scent of blood ... blue david roars
warm night rumbles

before i get too 'civilized' or something for my own good;

ඇර ලංකා, ඇරෝ !
කැංගරැ මස්, කනෝ !

:-)

෴

prediction:

mcgrath will get the man of tournament ... as a consolation.

we won!

sri lanka is through to the finals of world cup. :-) congratulations to mahela jayawardene and cricket team!

they and selectors deserve commendation for taking a brave decision in sticking to tharanga as well, even though most people, with some reason, thought he should be dropped. hopefully their other talked about (and well defended) decision will also pay off in the end.

hope south africans will give a better fight to the australians than new zealand was able to manage against our team today, but australians should be the team to beat in final

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ps
maybe the jobless fellow who has been writing several hate posts a day in ranjitfernandosucks blog will press the mute button on tv remote when ranjith fernando comes on and create a blog called umpiressuck. (today's umpires probably are of the type amnesty was so zealously calling for) unless of course he (like some others i can think of) prefers to criticize mere presentation and words (commentary that does not affect the match in this case) over actual content and actions (such as decisions of umpires that affect the cricket).

marvan or tharanga? let mahela and co. decide

almost everybody online or offline is discussing whether sri lankan cricket team should substitute marvan atapattu for upul tharanga for the upcoming semi final and hopefully final. this is as it should be. such discussions and criticisms add to the enjoyment of the sport. but has it gone too far?

i am not going to repeat the arguments here, you may find some of the arguments (generally in favor of substitution) in the comments section of some of my earlier posts (here for instance) as well as in numerous other posts in the blogosphere, and elsewhere in media. in fact you may find them hard to miss even if you are not interested in cricket. (fyi my opinion is that we may have tried out marvan in last two matches but now it is too late)

as i said, all this is good and inevitable and should continue. however, what i don't like is the way some people imo are trying to influence the decision through putting pressure on the team management and selectors. some of the one sided coverage of the issue in certain sunday newspapers yesterday was especially bad. they went as far as to imply some sort of a conspiracy (by whom and why was left obscure, as is the case with such absurdities) to keep marvan out.

i am sure that tom moody, mahela, and others, who have the power to make the decision are well aware of the problem raised by tharanga not scoring runs. they should be allowed to take the best decision free of interference, in the interest of our team using all their greater knowledge. it is after all they who would be held responsible in the end. a cricket team is not a democratic political institution. nor should it be. pressure, criticism, moral value judgments ('fairness', 'injustice', 'disrespect to former captain' etc.) etc. of all sorts of commentators here and there should not enter it, either in complying with those things or in irritated reaction to them. such interference or attempted interference, imo are a greater danger to our chances of winning the world cup, than selection of either marvan or tharanga.

in conclusion everyone is free to debate the decision but no one should be allowed to interfere with it. let mahela and co. decide and bear responsibility.

let us wish our team the wisdom and strength to make the best decision to win the semi final.

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hope sarkozy will win

first round of french presidential election will be held today. it will definitely go for a second round run-off between the two leading contenders.

i hope (as i have been doing since 2005) nicolas sarkozy will win eventually, after coming first today. he is certainly not a libertarian. he is not even a politician in the mold of american republican or british thatcherite conservative type, which is the next best thing, but he is the best on offer in this french election. of the others, ségolène royal is a socialist made palatable by a pretty face, françois bayrou is basically an empty everything for everyone, and jean-marie le pen is too right wing. besides, sarkozy is not chirac that disastrous socialist masquerading as a center right gaullist.

france deserves a better fate and prospects than its present fate and prospects. it has given so much to the world and is one of those few countries one can fall in love with, even without being born or grown up there. hopefully a sarkozy win will indicate that french are finally willing to get their act together and willing to stop their country's stagnation and slow relative decline.

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read kumar on selection decision

people have been making all sorts of comments online and offline about the sri lanka's resting of strike bowlers for our super8s match against australia. ( i too wrote a blog post).

now kumar sangakara has written an excellent article entitled "too much has been made of our selection" to cricinfo explaining the decision and questioning (quite pointedly in case of ian chappell et al.) some of the criticisms. below are some extracts but please read the complete article.

"Much of the analysis has been ill-informed, offered without great thought or deep understanding of this Sri Lanka team. Consequently, many of the critics have been wide of the mark in their conclusions.
...
I question whether double standards are being applied here by some pundits. ... Will some of the television "experts" now calling for ICC intervention do the same when Ricky Ponting or Stephen Fleming or Graeme Smith next rests a strike bowler? I doubt it.
...
Some of the critics appear to think that the Australia game was our most important game in the tournament. ... The simple fact was it was the least important game of our World Cup. Even the Bermuda game was more important.
...
We are here to win the World Cup. Everything we do is focused on that goal. That was our focus before the tournament, and that is our ultimate focus right now. We don't care about morale-boosting victories
...
We rested Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas and Lasith Malinga in the best interests of the individuals and the team. ... We are now confident that they will be in the best possible physical shape they could be for the semi-finals. It was a team decision and a decision we're entirely comfortable with.
...
Vaas and Murali may have played many games against Australia during their long careers, but Sri Lanka have not played Australia in the last 14 months - a long time in international cricket - and only six members of Australia's current team played in that match in Brisbane. Giving Australia's batsmen a free look-in was not to our advantage if we meet again.
...
The argument against resting key players centres on the need to keep up so-called winning momentum. When self-belief is fragile momentum often gets one through. However, our confidence is high
...
All the players understood our tactics and we went into that game looking for a win. ... Unfortunately, despite winning a useful toss, our batting let us down and we were punished for mistakes at the start and end of our innings.
...
I am sure the debate will rumble on. We, though, are concentrating on the next challenge against New Zealand, a tough opponent for a semi-final. ... The side that turns up and believes in itself most will win. ... We are not making any assumptions about the conditions. We have a team that can perform in a variety of conditions and the suggestion that we'd prefer a slower surface like St Lucia is wide of the mark.
..."

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what was mahela jayawardene thinking?

i am asking that question literally. what were his and sri lankan team management's reasons for dropping muttiah muralitharan and chaminda vaas from the the match against australia?

i must confess that first time i heard this just before the match, was the first time that i doubted the sri lankan team's capacity to win the cricket world cup this year. cricket is a game of character and being negative is not the way to go. at first glance this seemed to be a very negative move on the part of our team.

but is it a negative move? let us go through several possible reasons.
(btw several bloggers have already written about this while the match was going on; a week in sri lanka, scourge!)

fixing the semi finals?
one of the possible reasons, which comes to mind initially, is that sri lanka was trying to manage where and against who it plays the semi finals. but that explanation cannot be correct. final placement of teams in the super eights points table, which will determine the semi final ties, will depend on several things; actual results of several matches ( sl vs aus, aus vs nz, sl vs ireland, and even sa vs eng, etc. ) and the margins of victory (thus net run rate of teams) in those matches. it is absurd to think that all that can be managed (or sl tried to) through one match. so this cannot be the explanation.

injury free rest
another explanation is that resting vaas and murali and preventing any injuries to them (thus preserving them 'intact' for semis and finals) is in the best interests of sri lankan team. that is part of the 'official' explanation. unfortunately injuries are not confined to actual matches, as lasith malinga's injury showed. sri lankan management will look really foolish if vaas or murali were to incur one (which god forbid!) in the next few days. however this was done before in larger scale when same bowlers were not included in the indian tour. but a tour and a match are two different things. on the whole if this was the correct explanation, it is a bit negative. (however mahela and co. are the ones best placed to know what is best for the team.)

trying out
other part of 'official' explanation is more positive in intent. sri lankans wanted to try out the malinga bandara and nuwan kulasekera. while some may question the wisdom of trying them out against one of the most devastating batting lineups, imo that very fact makes it a very positive move. (in any case this is the first opportunity sri lanka got to experiment) only it did not come off. our batsmen did not put enough runs on the board for those bowlers to bowl at. in addition both nuwan kulasekara and malinga bandara would have been confident if murali and/or vaas were at the other end or were available to replace them, instead of farveez maharoof or dilhara fernando during the match. anyway viewed from this angle this move was a positive one, but sri lankans did not go about it in the correct way.

mind games
another explanation is that sri lankans were trying to play mind games with australians; holding back the main strike bowlers (vaas, murali and malinga) so that they can be unleashed on unaccustomed australians in the semi or final, and while trying to fluster them with lesser bowlers in this match. problem with mind games is that, as the wily detective in novel crime and punishment says, 'they can cut both ways'; australians weren't flustered, their bowlers got the better of most of our batsmen, andrew symonds who wanted some time on the middle got some, it looked like we were afraid to expose our best bowlers to their batsmen while they wanted to expose their best players to all comers (they certainly did not rest anyone, they would have played shane watson if he was fit). most of all they beat us comprehensively in a game that was supposed to be (including in their own assessment) very close. all that would not do them any harm, with regard to morale and momentum. btw they are not all that unfamiliar with vaas and murali in any case.

we on the other hand were trashed. saying that only nine of the beaten side will face them again won't take away that fact. a close defeat with out best bowlers bowling would have been much better psychologically. a similar trashing with out best bowlers bowling would have been worse, but if we want to win the world cup we should have the confidence in our own ability to win. mind games cut both ways.

not that negative
in conclusion this move by the sri lankan team management was not all that negative as it first appears ( and as some biased international commentators may try to make it out - such commentary is another perhaps not significant negative consequence). however we did not do the right things to benefit from its positive aspects.

sri lankans should have done what mahela was saying they were doing all along; face each match one at a time instead of thinking too much ahead. unfortunately he did not do that yesterday. results are in australians' favor. pity.

let us hope that our sri lankan team has enough moral strength to take the few positives and lessons (batting of chamara silva, mahela, and maharoof, russel arnold's wickets, how we can handle australian attack shaun tait in particular, australian plans against our batsmen, etc) and forget the negatives. and hopefully go on to defeat the australians in the semi or final.

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ps
quite apart from its effect on cricket and cricketers on the field, dropping of our best bowlers was a let down to all the spectators everywhere (not to mention sponsors). everybody must remember that in the end it is the spectators that make this tournament important. too much of this will put people off.