Image Credit- Getty
One of the biggest nerds in cricket is Dimuth Karunaratne. In addition, he is one of Sri Lanka’s most successful Test hitters ever and one of the greatest openers of his generation.
Even though he approaches cricket in a somewhat different way than Karunaratne, Rangana Herath is an enormous nerd. In the history of Test cricket, he is the most productive left-arm bowler.
47 Tests have been played between the two. In five of them, Herath has even led Karunaratne as his captain. And Herath, the New Zealand bowling consultant, contributed to Karunaratne’s demise on the third day of the present Galle Test. At the very least, Karunaratne is jokingly accusing his old teammate of this.
Karunaratne is a fantastic spin bowler who enjoys batting in Galle. Over 27% of his 7092 Test runs have occurred at this location. This is partly because Sri Lanka plays a lot of cricket here; Karunaratne has spent 21 per cent of his innings in Galle.
He is a grudging sweeper and reverse-sweeper, yet he can execute both of these shots. He frequently whips around the legside against spin and returns to cut it between point and cover.
Herath, on the other hand, has exceptional insight into the intentions and frame of mind of opposing hitters. We are not attempting to be cruel. However, did you ever think he would be a 433-wicket bowler?
On the third day, shortly after tea, Herath descended the stairs from the visitors’ changing area to speak with Ajaz Patel. Karunaratne claims it happened just after lunch, but that couldn’t be true because he had hardly finished sweeping the ball before then.
“After lunch? Or maybe it was just before lunch? No, it was after lunch,” Karunaratne said. “At that time, Rangana aiya came down to the ground and gave a message to Ajaz Patel. It was after that they changed the field and the set-up against me.
“They brought square leg up for me, and set the kind of field that we had set for Tom Latham. So when you have that field, you know as a batter that if you get the sweep slightly wrong, it can go up in the air and square leg can catch it, or short fine leg can catch it. It’s with that mentality that Rangana aiya would have told them to do that.”
Shortly after tea, Karunaratne dropped low and attempted to sweep a sweepable delivery that Patel had put down, but he failed miserably. After staying low and hiding beneath his shot, the ball clattered into the stumps.
“I had a little doubt in my head – maybe the sweep will go badly,” Karunaratne said. “These things happen. When the opposition has somebody who knows about how we play, they will share those things. So I was playing with that in my head, and that’s why I couldn’t pick that line, and I tried to sweep the ball too hard.”
It is accurate. Karunaratne seldom manages to become victorious. He faces Herath’s brilliance, who has taken over 100 wickets at this pitch, in addition to Patel, a good bowler in his own right.
Karunaratne missed 83 runs, which seems like a bad score for him at this point in his career. He has expressed his desire to reach 20 centuries. He is still limited to sixteen.
However, he was forced to leave his 17th. And when life and coaching contracts allow it, you can nearly put a good bet on him meeting up with the person who planned his collapse and the two of them working things out.