In most sports it is the flamboyant players that are always remembered and the hard work and efforts of the other performers – though equally crucial – are often forgotten. Asanka Gurusinha, one of the heroes of our World Cup winning team, was the rock on which Sri Lanka’s triumphswere achieved but his efforts – as one of the most solid number three batsman in the world at that time – were not always recognized.
Subash Jayaram caught up with Asanka last week in Australia….
Subash Jayaraman: Greetings Asanka. Could you tell us about your cricketing life from the days of playing school cricket in Sri Lanka,? Also your playing relationship with Hashan Tillakaratne from a young age?
Asanka Gurusinha: Hashan and I started playing together from the age of seven. So we go a long, long way back. I was captaining the Under-11 team and he was the vice-captain. Even at that age, I saw him scoring hundreds for the school side. Hashan and I put on a partnership when we were ten years old – an opening partnership of 200-something, and we both got hundreds. Our families know each other very well. That friendship kept going.
When we were young, we didn’t know Test cricket. When I was playing school cricket, there was no Test cricket in Sri Lanka. I always wanted to play cricket and I know Hashan did. It is something that we both cherished. Over 40 years, the friendship has been just fantastic.
SJ: At the time, Sri Lanka was still young as a cricketing nation, with not a lot of opportunities to play first-class cricket. How did you go about developing your batting? You were known as a patient No. 3 batsman.
AG: I used to listen to the radio, because we didn’t have TVs initially. We used to play in the backyards, playing England v Australia. There were players whom I knew and I thought I wanted to do this one day. I never dreamt, to be honest, of playing for Sri Lanka and of winning a World Cup.
In school cricket I was a very aggressive batsman, but after coming into the national team and then in 1986, when I was asked to bat at No. 3, that was when I changed my style.
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Marvan Atapattu has compared his beginning of a two-year contract as head coach of the Sri Lanka cricket team to the start of his international cricket career.
Following a successful stint as interim head coach where the highlight was winning a maiden Test series in England, Atapattu was at the receiving end of a 5-0 thrashing from India in his first official appointment as head coach.
“I see no difference to the start of my coaching career to the way I started my international cricket career,” Atapattu told The Nation. “I would’ve liked to have started on a better note but it has not gone that way. It cannot get any worse than this I can only see myself getting better and see the good side of it from here.”
Atapattu began his Test career with a pair (0 and 0) against India at Chandigarh in 1990 and his first six Test innings comprised five ducks and a single before he was able to break the hoodoo by scoring 25 against New Zealand at Dunedin seven years later.
The stylish right-hander went onto become one of the most successful opening batsmen the country has produced going onto accumulate 5502 runs from 90 Tests at an average of nearly 40 and 8529 runs in ODIs.
The upcoming seven-match one-day international series against England provides Atapattu with a chance to put the record straight and he is making no bones about it.
“We’ll have to get back to our winning ways and that’s going to be our priority,” said Atapattu. “The best thing that happened to us in the three weeks in India is that although we went through a very bad period losing one match after another we had a very positive dressing room.
“The dressing room environment was very positive, the players kept motivating each other, contributions were coming from every corner and the players wanted to do well although the execution was not right there. I’ve been in dressing rooms especially in India where things had gone wrong and I’ve seen worse dressing rooms than what I have experienced with this team,” Atapattu continued.
“We want to think that this is a new series and India is just a bad experience. Teams will go through such periods. We are a team that has done so well in the past few months or so winning six of our last ten one-day series and lost only three to Pakistan, South Africa and now India. For a team that has lost very few series we are a unit that is quite capable of bouncing back be the unit that we used to be.
“I am quite confident of the boys doing well especially in their preparations, practices, meetings and the efforts they are putting in. At the same time we got to know there are a few areas we need to brush up the bowling for instance. (Lasith) Malinga is nursing an injury and Sachitra (Senanayake) hopefully will come back very soon. We won’t be at full strength at least till mid January. But the ones that we are working with are giving their 100 percent,” he said.
Atapattu disclosed that the team had started to show signs of playing the kind of cricket they are capable of during the fifth and final ODI at Ranchi.
“The last game we really played to a plan that we are renowned for and if we had played the series that way it would have been more competitive. I wouldn’t guarantee victories but happier knowing that we had done something capable of doing without worrying about what the Indians can do.”
Does that mean that Sri Lanka was under prepared going into the Indian series?
“In a sense yes. It’s a known fact that this tour was not in our calendar but we were informed and people who had to take a decision took a decision. I am not going to debate on that it is very unethical. If this tour ended on a positive note it would have been a different story,” said Atapattu.
“It’s a fact that we didn’t have our full bowling line-up. In that case we always dabbled about how we are going to cope with the new rules. We wanted that extra few runs when we were setting up a total and we felt that we were going too hard at the start and losing wickets regularly that was our downfall.
“The biggest disappointment for the whole team in India was we weren’t competitive enough. As long as we are competitive we will have more results going our way. If we were competitive the disappointments could have been lesser,” he said.
“There’s no doubt that we were outplayed in all three departments. We all know that India is not the easiest places to go and perform. If you go back to history you’ll find only teams from Australia and Pakistan have done well and won a series there unless you go back to the eighties where the West Indies have done well.
“India in India is very strong and they are almost unbeatable when it comes to a series. They were at the top of their game being the no. 1 ODI team. It was always going to be a challenge. After the first game we played in Cuttack we were trying to get ahead of ourselves by trying to score the total they got in the first game (363/5). We thought batting first we had to score something in the region of 350 plus to make a match of it and we fell short by at least 70-80 runs. We realized as a group later on.”
Atapattu described England without James Anderson and Stuart Broad as a “very competitive side”.
“The ODI teams around the world come with different strategies to adapt to the new rules that are implemented. They are two huge names that have made huge impact for England. The bowlers they have brought on the tour are quite capable of disturbing some of the best batsmen on their day. It’s about respecting the ball not the bowler. England are a very balanced and strong side and they are also trying to figure out their best 15 for the World Cup. They are going to be very competitive no doubt about it.”
Ceylon Today Sports: Newly appointed Sri Lanka Under 19 and Under 17 Batting Coach and dashing former Sri Lanka Test and ODI batsman Roy Luke Dias said yesterday that his vision and dream was to ensure that he brings the 2016 Under 19 Cricket World Cup which will be played in Bangladesh to Sri Lanka.
I will be getting my letter of appointment today and I will see the talent available which will help me to hone their batting skills which will also mould them to reach the national team, Dias told Ceylon Today Sports in an exclusive interview yesterday. He also said that the purpose was to create a feeder system for the national team as well.
"I have been asked to mould these players for the Sri Lanka national team and the 'A' team and the sole purpose of that exercise will be to have a set of players who will be confident and able where the batting techniques would be perfected at that level and for the national team and the Sri Lanka 'A' team," Dias added. He will be working with Roger Wijesuriya.
It is also nice to serve national cricket after 14 years and I am also thankful to Sri Lanka Cricket for affording this opportunity to serve the game, he said. One of the challenges that he faces in preparing the Sri Lanka Under 19 team is that most of the current players would be over age and he would be now working with the current U-19 Dias, who was ecstatic about returning to Sri Lanka after coaching the Nepal team for ten years starting from 2002, where Nepal won the Plate Championships of the Under 19 World Cup World Cup that year, losing to Zimbabwe. He also coached Malaysia for two years from 2011 to 2013. Another feather in his cap was that he coached Oman which also qualified for the T-20 World Cup.