Sineth Jayawardena: Captain and total flop with the bat
Sri Lanka’s next generation cricketers will return after a pathetic showing at the Under-19 Youth World Cup in South Africa after failing to make it to the semi finals.
The team beat lowly rated Zimbabwe and Namibia and lost to Australia in the first round to enter what was called the Super Six Stage from where the top two teams from two six-team groups qualify for the semi finals.
Sri Lanka lost to the West Indies by three wickets and was thrashed by South Africa by 119 runs in the Super Six stage as the team failed to make it to the semi finals.
Before the start of the tournament there was speculation that some of the players in the Sri Lanka tour party were picked because of parental connections with Sri Lanka Cricket which could not be verified.
Sri Lanka’s batting was a total flop with the captain and top order batter Sineth Jayawardena making scores of 7, 10, 16, 11 and 6 in the five matches the team played.
Opener Pulindu Perera was the next worst culprit with scores of 3, 3, 0, 24 and 0 while the other opener Vishen Helambage made 0 and 0 in two matches.
Ravishan de Silva made scores of 31, 2, 30 and 5 while Rusanda Gamage made 31, 17 and 10 in three games.
The only batter to do something was middle order player Dinura Kalupahana with scores of 60, 0, 64, 53 and 19 while wicket-keeper batter Sharujan Shanmuganathan made scores of 41, 13, 21, 14 and 29.
