Dear Mr. Ashantha de Mel please let me wish you the very best for 2019 and I guess you will need more of these wishes just in case you will want to continue for the rest of the year as the head selector of the Sri Lanka cricket team.
Firstly I must say that you have already made a poor start by picking Angelo Mathews into the Sri Lanka ODI squad as he has thoroughly disappointed you by returning home with another of his trademark hamstring injuries.
But the biggest irony is that in an interview with the Daily News you say that you will not mollycoddle Mathews. What a walking contradiction are you. You were the first to do that when your predecessors in the Selection Committee kept him out of the ODI squad and you brought him back. If you are merely following the political culture in this country where one Party replaces another Party and then does something else to show the difference in order to survive, then please accept my deepest sympathies.
In another interview with the Daily News early this week you started off the New Year by merely saying what several people before you had said and that is Sri Lanka’s domestic set-up is to blame for the Test debacle in New Zealand. This has been said and the media has reported it a thousand times before each time Sri Lanka is thrashed.
Well Mr. De Mel can we change the domestic set-up right now at this very moment and have fast pitches like you say so that our batsmen will be able to play the short-pitched fast delivery.
Will you also tell Sri Lanka Cricket to terminate the services of the expert batting coach because going by what you say Sri Lanka does not need an expert batting coach and only needs to prepare fast wickets for club cricket in the country so that we will be able to prepare batsmen to play on fast pitches.
But on the other hand what if someone tells you that you are talking through your hat as Sri Lanka contracts these foreign expert batting coaches to correct the batting techniques of players which helps to overcome the drawback of Sri Lanka not able to have fast pitches in the country like Australia, New Zealand, England and South Africa have.
Then Mr De Mel this is not the first time that you are a decision maker in the administration of Sri Lanka cricket. If not then why do you say that the fast bowlers are delivering the ball from a wrong position? Then of what use is the expert bowling coach.
Don’t you think it is better for Sri Lanka to lose and learn than lose in the company of experts in batting, bowling and fielding. On a positive note I was happy to see Sri Lanka fielding well against New Zealand in the concluded Test series. What I need to know is how come Sri Lanka fields well when there is a foreign coach around and don’t do the same when one of our own people work as the fielding coach.
Finally I would like to know what is the role of Mr. Chandika Hathurusinha the coach. We have three separate coaches to handle batting, bowling and fielding. To me it seems Sri Lanka is having too many experts. We Sri Lankans are very puzzled. Like the politicians if you think that Sri Lankans can be taken for a ride, then you are living on the blind side.
Supun S Silva
Pita Kotte