Battle of the middle orders
Former West Indies fast bowler cum coach Reon King feels that the Digicel Test Series between West Indies and Sri Lanka will be a battle of the middle orders.
King, who was appointed coach for the Guyana Cricket Board President’s Select XI which took on Sri Lanka in the visiting team’s warm up game at the Guyana National Stadium, Providence, is in a good position to comment as he paid close attention to all the trends in the entire three day game.
“I think the new ball will be key for the West Indies bowlers because you want to get a few wickets early and expose their batting strengths in Jayawardene and Sangakkara along with the attacking players such as (Tillikaratne) Dilshan and (Chamara) Silva,” said the 32 year old who played 19 Test matches and 50 One Day Internationals between 1998 and 2005.
Commenting on how the Providence pitch is likely to play for the First Digicel Test King said it will not depart too much from the traditional Guyanese Test wicket even though Test cricket will be played at Providence for the first time, moving from the traditional Bourda venue.
“From looking at our game I think what you will find early on is that the wicket will start slow but as it progresses the bounce will become higher and a little truer,” said King who picked up 53 Test wickets and 76 ODI wickets in his career.
“What you found is that even when Murali was bowling on the second day it was easy paced and when it turned, it turned slow,” King observed.
He also reasoned that given the nature of the pitch the West Indian batsmen will have to work hard to overcome the challenges from Sri Lanka’s two senior bowlers then capitalize on the inexperience of the others.
“They (Sri Lanka) have some inexperience in the seam bowling department and they have a proliferation of left arm seamers, it is a clear plus for them to have (Chaminda) Vaas and (Muttiah) Muralitharan but if the West Indies batsmen can blunt those two then they can capitalize on the inexperience of the rest of their attack,” King analysed.
And he also thinks that swing which Vaas in particular thrives on will not feature too much in the Digicel Test match.
“Their seamers seemed to be trying to get swing but what I got from our batsman was that there wasn’t much swing at all, the West Indies batsmen have to be positive but not play indiscreet shots, especially to bowlers like Murali and Vaas,” King advised.
“That is the way Jason Haynes and Shamarh Brooks (who both made half centuries for the GCB President’s Select XI) played, they weren’t overawed by the presence of Murali, they backed themselves and were positive. If the West Indies batsmen, who are much more capable than Brooks, could learn from what he did and play each ball on its merit then their success will be better,” King reasoned.
Even though the Sri Lankans gave an excellent account of themselves in the warm up game King reckons they have not yet completely adjusted to the local conditions.
“The batsmen don’t seem to be absolutely comfortable with the slowness in the surface here as yet, maybe because they were just in Australia or are probably because they are used to a bit more bounce in their own surfaces back home, they struggled a bit with the lowness of the bounce on the track we played on,” King said.
“On the bowling side the seamers, because of the slowness of the track struggled with their lines and lengths and I think they were genuinely surprised by the lowness of the track,” King said.