: If you’re a Sri Lanka fan, there isn’t much to cheer about in this World Cup. And the root problems do not lie with the coaching staff or the on-field leadership. To the people in charge of Sri Lankan cricket, We hope this email finds you well.
We are writing this after observing another embarrassing start to a World Cup campaign. We regret to take this tone, but honestly, this has gone on long enough, and something needs to be said. Over the past week, we have stayed up late into the night, and woken up early in the morning, to watch the men’s team play in the ongoing T20 World Cup.
While we were excited about the state of the bowling resources in this squad (our fast-bowling battery has never been faster), we were always worried about the lack of dynamism in the batting, which never seemed up to modern T20I standards. As if to prove our point, Sri Lanka collapsed to 77 against South Africa, then 124 for 9 against Bangladesh. Unless there are some serious upsets in Group D, Sri Lanka are out of the T20 World Cup for exactly the reasons expected.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this World Cup campaign could have just been an email. We also take no pleasure in noting that it is now exactly ten years since Sri Lanka last won a global cricket tournament, a victory we remember celebrating in truly euphoric fashion, by the way. In the seven years leading up to that 2014 T20 win, Sri Lanka had been in major finals four times, and were more or less a fixture in .
