Bowling a worry for Sri Lanka: Murali
Muttiah Muralidharan is not sure whether Sri Lanka have enough firepower to topple the Australians in the upcoming series.
Murali, who has been roped in by Cricket Australia (CA) as a short term spin bowling consultant for Steve Smith’s men, believes that bowling remains Sri Lanka’s biggest weakness.
Sri Lanka only managed to dismiss England twice in six attempts during the recent three-Test series that resulted in a 0-2 defeat for the islanders.
“Their main weapon is Rangana Herath,” Muralidaran was quoted as saying by CA’s website.
“Other than that, they don’t have any other bowler to get wickets for them. If Australia can exploit them and their bowlers keep playing well against them, then they have a good chance,” Murali added.
Murali, however, thinks that familiar home conditions will come to the aid of the inexperienced side led by Angelo Mathews.
“The conditions are different to any other place in the world,” Murali, Test cricket’s highest wicket-taker, said.
“The Sri Lankans have played their whole life here, so they’ll give a better competition than what they did in England.
“I think it will be a very good contest and whoever keeps the patience will have the series,” he added.
Like Murali, Sri Lanka coach Graham Ford too thinks that they can use the home conditions in their favour to surprise the Aussies.
(Telegraph India)
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Everyone knows this. SL has home advantage. Our players are used to slow flat wickets and our Captain like these conditions. Yes, if our bowlers rally around Rangana, field well (with out butter figures) and more importantly our batsmen like Angelo, Chandimal speak with the bat and providing umpires do not give bad decisions (like in England) we have good chance of giving a fight to Auz.
But why are they keeping out Ajanta Mendis who the next day the elite ICC panel named him to be the best ODI bowler in the world for 2014 and the only Sri Lankan Cricketer to be in the world ODI eleven for the year 2014 no Sanga, No Mahela, No Mathews, No Herath the very next day he was thrown out of the squad during the English 2014 tour of Sri Lanka although in that series AM was highest wicket taker 9 wickets in 4 matches
the following are the Matches he took the wks for the year 2014
Sri Lanka in Bangladesh ODI Series, 2013/14 3 match series
1 1 8.0 0 43 2 2/43 21.50 5.37 24.0 0 0 20 Feb 2014 Sri Lanka
Asia Cup (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka in Bangladesh), 2013/14
3 3 26.0 2 126 9 4/60 14.00 4.84 17.3 1 0 28 Feb 2014 5 matches Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka in Ireland ODI Series, 2014 1 match series
1 1 10.0 1 27 3 3/27 9.00 2.70 20.0 0 0 6 May 2014 Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka in England ODI Series, 2014 5 match series
2 2 19.0 0 110 4 2/50 27.50 5.78 28.5 0 0 31 May 2014 Sri Lanka
South Africa in Sri Lanka ODI Series, 2014 3 match series
3 3 23.1 2 127 7 3/61 18.14 5.48 19.8 0 0 6 Jul 2014 South Africa
Sri Lanka in India ODI Series, 2014/15 4 match seies
2 2 16.4 0 143 4 4/73 35.75 8.58 25.0 1 0 13 Nov 2014 India
England in Sri Lanka ODI Series, 2014/15 7 match series
5 5 39.4 1 246 9 3/33 27.33 6.20 26.4 0 0 26 Nov 2014 Sri Lanka
The number of matches in the series has been introduced by me after obtaining data from cric info
Total of 38 wickets out of 15 matches played by AM out of 28 matches played by Sri Lanka
In Asia cup 2014 he was dropped by the Captain in the the finals after taking the most No of wickects of 9 other bowlers Malinga 6 wks and Senanayake 4 wks AM now is aged 31 years and is not given a chance to bring our country again to the top 3 in the ODI and the 20/20 while we are witnessing the way our bowlers are hammered to all corners of the field which is breaking our hearts while the captain is clicking on to his perks like glue stating he will not run away and Sanath who was made the chief selector by the present sports minister stating that he won the Asia cup 2014 but I have by a letter dated 13/11.2015 informed the Sports Minister that it was Ajantha Mendis who won the Asia Cup 2014. The above data shows that it was AM who won the Asia cup and our captain got the best achiever by throwing out AM from the finals. Sanath and our Sports Minister and the captain should resign or be sacked
Cricket! Boring game for boring people.
These are from Cric info the credible evidence which can be confirmed from Cric info
Ajanta Mendis: Even as the Sri Lankan mystery spinner found himself out of favour many a times through the year, he ended up as the leading wicket taker of 2014 in ODIs. In 17 matches, he took 38 wickets at an average of 21.63, with a wicket every 22.5 balls. Apart from some steller batting performances, Ajantha Mendis’ fin form with the in the ICC ODI team for 2014
Ajantha Mendis is the only Sri Lankan cricketer to be in ICC ODI Team of the Year 2014 (in batting order):
ball played a key role in Sri Lanka’s success in 2014, the 5-0 thrashing against India notwithstanding
Only Sri Lankan Cricketer to be
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak) Quinton de Kock (SA)
Virat Kohli (Ind)
George Bailey (Aus)
AB de Villiers (SA)
MS Dhoni (wicketkeeper) (captain)
Dwayne Bravo (WI)
James Faulkner (Aus)
Dale Steyn (SA)
Mohammad Shami (Ind)
Ajantha Mendis (SL)
Rohit Sharma (Ind) (12th man)
From the time Ajantha Mendis had been sent out of the squad in 2014 our ranking in the ODI has come down from 3rd to 6th this is the value which Ajantha Mendis has brought into our it is probably jealousies that has brought down the grading of our team