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Follow UsWhat connects Arsenal’s Eddie Nketiah and the Sri Lankan cricket team? Well, actually, nothing.
But considering the way the Lankan bowlers rose to the occasion on Thursday against Bangladesh, there is no harm in cheekily speculating that they took inspiration from the words spoken by Nketiah in an episode in Amazon’s ‘All or Nothing’ documentary featuring Arsenal, that was released last year.
In the said incident, Nketiah is in conversation with fellow bench-warmer Sambi Lokonga, who bemoans his lack of first-team game time. There, Lokonga complains about being a perennial reserve, to which Nketiah responds with the following words: “stop feeling sorry for yourself and f****** wake up man.”
Considering they had lost as many as four first-choice bowlers to injury — Chameera, Kumara, Madushanka and Hasaranga — Sri Lanka could easily have felt ‘sorry’ for themselves, bemoaning their fortune. Instead, faced with adversity, the Lankan bowlers stepped in style to kick-start their defense of the Asia Cup with a thumping victory and extend their winning streak in ODI cricket to 11 — their longest in this format.
Losing one premier first choice bowler is tough enough, but Sri Lanka have had rotten luck in lead-up to this Asia Cup, losing four x-factor bowlers. Three of them — Hasaranga, Kumara and Madushanka — played a significant part in them winning the World Cup qualifiers, accounting for 51% of wickets Sri Lanka took in the competition. It was thus going to be a monumental task for the hosts to keep up their standards with the ball.
On the day, though, at no point did it look like the Lankans were fielding a semi second-string attack as they ran riot with the ball to roll Bangladesh over for 164.
It was an all-round bowling effort as every bowler barring Kasun Rajitha chipped-in with at least one wicket, but for Dasun Shanaka’s side, the game was truly defined by two bowlers: the Chennai Super Kings boys Maheesh Theekshana and Matheesha Pathirana.
In the absence of Hasaranga, Theekshana started the game as Sri Lanka’s most important bowler due to his (relative) experience and element of mystery. With the bowling attack hamstrung by injuries, Sri Lanka almost needed Theekshana to have a good game in order to get off to a winning start.
And have a good game he did.
Entering the clash having picked a staggering 20 wickets in his previous 6 ODIs, it took Theekshana all of two balls to strike as he sent back debutant Tanzid Hasan with a pearler.The delivery was a classic Theekshana new-ball dismissal: a carrom-ball that drifted sharply, pitched in line and struck the left-hander plumb in front. Tanzid stood no chance; truth be told, not many batters would have survived that delivery.
Theekshana’s next wicket would only come 40 overs later — in his 8th over — but, by then, he’d already done serious damage via the chokehold he’d put on the Bangladesh batters: his figures after seven overs read 7-1-18-1, with him bowling a remarkable 28 dots.
Nothing indicated how good Theekshana was on the day more than the fact that Nazmul Shanto, Bangladesh’s best batter in the game, scored at a strike rate of 36.4 against him before getting knocked over by a wicked carrom ball whilst batting on 89. For context, against the other bowlers, Shanto had scored 77 off 89 balls, which is a strike rate of 86.5.
Theekshana’s performance could easily have fetched him the Player of the Match award on another day, but, as it turned out, he was overshadowed by none other than his CSK teammate, Matheesha Pathirana.
Unlike Theekshana, Pathirana was not relentless. Nor was he economical.
But he was unpredictable and explosive, and Bangladesh had no answers to his variations; they got straight up knocked out.
In the 46 balls he bowled on Thursday, Pathirana picked up as many wickets as he did in his previous 144 deliveries in ODI cricket. In every way, this was a breakthrough performance for the 20-year-old not just in 50-over cricket, but overall in national colours.
And it was poetic that the same was facilitated by the weapons that helped him announce himself to the world in the shortest format.
Pathirana’s toe-crushing yorkers and raw pace are what make him a true spectacle — and drive the hype — but what’s not spoken of nearly enough is his intelligence. He uses both those weapons to his advantage even when he’s not using them. Meaning, he catches batters off guard by throwing in wicked bouncers when they’re expecting a yorker, and fools them with slower deliveries when they’re expecting a 145 kph rocket.
47.36% of Pathirana’s IPL 2023 wickets (9/19) came via slower deliveries, and the bouncer (read: short ball) was his most ‘reliable’ delivery when it came to containing batters: he delivered 79 deliveries that were 8m or shorter and conceded just 82 runs off those deliveries. The subsequent economy rate for yorkers was just 4.9, but he erred a lot when attempted them, evident by the high E.R on full-tosses.
The short balls and slower ones, hence, proved to be his actual secret weapons in IPL 2023.
These were also the two deliveries that tormented Bangladesh on Thursday as all four wickets Pathirana took were either bouncers (Shakib & Mushfiqur) or cutters (Taskin & Mustafizur).
The 20-year-old’s change-ups can be tricky even on the flattest of batting surfaces; the sluggish, two-paced nature of the Pallekele wicket compounded the difficulty of the task for the Bangladesh batters, who simply were not able to hang with the slingy right-armer’s variations.
Astonishingly, Pathirana, on the day, induced 34.70% false shots, which was more than 2x of what any other Sri Lankan pacer managed.
Considering this, it was probably fair — just — that he pipped his CSK teammate to the Player of the Match award.
Pathirana and Theekshana, then, set up what seemed like a straightforward victory, but the chase ended up turning out nervier than what Sri Lanka would have liked. But ultimately, the batters got the job done, and convincingly so, getting to the target with 11 overs to spare.
For Sri Lanka, with the bat, too, there were twin heroes as Samarawickrama and Asalanka composed excellent fifties, but all said and done, Thursday was a day that belonged to the Lankan bowlers, who rose to the occasion and ensured that the juggernaut kept rolling.
Maybe, just maybe, it is no coincidence that Eddie Nketiah earned his maiden England call-up on the same day that Sri Lanka took the words he spoke and put them to action.
