Memories Of Greatest Cricketers - - #8 Shane Warne

[Kalyasi]

Kalyasi, uuu matriculation ?? :P

Bilus doo dodal evvalavoo??

yen +2 chemistry (or was it physics) paritchai veena ponadhukku main reason De Silva (WC 96 semifinal) He was the main edhiri of the Yindhiyan team!

ellarukkum intha maadri cricket series la paritchaiya kotta vitta kathai irukkum... for me it was 10th Science, 1998 April.... I need not tell why.... Sandstorm sharjah la naa paritchaikku padikave illa.... Nalla vela pass panniten!!!

Chi I yaam very saari... It was the Kochi match on March 31st where Jadeja scored a century and Sachin Picked up 5 wickets... this one spoiled my Science board exam.....

BTW Stan naa CBSE!! Still naa yen april 22nd nadantha intha sharjah match a thiruttu thanama maadilenthu paarthen nu theriyala... Annual leave thaane

[littlemaster1982]

Aravida De Silva was rated next to Sachin by Peter Roebuck in one of his articles in India Today.

One of the most underrated batsman, IMO.

P.S: That Kochi match was on April 1

[Kalyasi]

Aravida De Silva was rated next to Sachin by Peter Roebuck in one of his articles in India Today.

One of the most underrated batsman, IMO.

P.S: That Kochi match was on April 1

Oh Yeah then My science exam must have been on the 2nd of April!!

[mgb]

To me some how Aravinda's style of batting resembled Roy Dias who was part of Srilankan test team in the inagural dates

[P_R]

Any team's technically best batsman comes in at one-drop. The reason is that he can enter at various stages of the game depending how the opening pair fared. So you need someone who is comfortable in seaming conditions and against spin. He would also need to be able to change the pace of the game as the situation demanded. Aravinda was a master.

As mentioned in the previoius post, his innings in the WC semi in Kolkata '96. When the deadly openers were gone India perhaps assumed the game was as good as over. They couldn't have been more wrong. de Silva's steadied the boat. The steadying was not about getting his eye in and playing a sober 'behind-the-line-of the-ball' innings.
He played freely and elegantly as if nothing happened. Scoring at a brutal pace.

He reached his 50 with 10 boundaries !!!
But not a single slogging shot. All of them well time drives, late cuts and signature pulls. One ball from Srinath was a little short of length but an extremely uncomfortable line. The only humanly possible scoring shot was a hook to deep square leg. The fielding restrictions were still on and Azhar had a deep square leg in place.

de Silva rose with the ball, a little jump in fact and got on top of it to play it through mid wicket. It beat the fielder to the fence. That was a clear example of reading the field, the wicket (the bounce - his innings was still only a few balls old at that time) and choosing the perfect shot.

He did such things several times that day and in the final. Have seen him play that stroke in tests too.

Perhaps if he had gone back and hooked it he may have still gotten six runs. His hook was one of his better strokes. But the way he played the pull seems to me to reflect a certain admancy about being in control of the ball despite his height. That makes it more exciting for me.

And of course, he could change gears and slog too. Like Chanderpaul and Azhar he also had this half step walk into the shot sometimes. Every now and then, he would walk a clear step ahead to play a shot.

In Sharjah he made Damien Fleming's life miserable once by ambling down and smashing him over mid-on/mid-wicket. Sachin has a drag and pull kind of shot. When he completed the execution - pardon the pun- it will look like he is losing the balance to his leg side. It essentially opens up so much room for him to play that stroke.

OTOH de Silva used to create room dangerously. Opening the gate between bat and pad when walking down. Many times he would sky a medium pacer to the covers but when it clicked he would have made the bowler look like a fool.That was clear arrogance, announcing to the bowler he was coming down even before the bowler had completed his run up. Daring him to choose a difficult length for him to negotiate even now.

Everything about de Silva is 'sometimes'. There is very little typicality in his game. He was flexibile as the situation demanded. He would get out to the most unthinkable shots sometimes. But many times the memories will be of de Silva creating runs out of the most impossible balls.

Darren Gough is one of the best death bowlers of the 90s. In a C&U series in Aus, Gough made a habit of picking up atleast 2-3 wickets in the last few overs. One matches de Silva showed him (and captain Stewart) why he himself is the king of death.

Straight and back over the bowler she'll go, an inch of width and he'll pick the gap perfectly, a couple of attempted yorkers (Gough's deadly ones) where turned into lollipops with de Silva walking down that half steps.

The extent to which he controlled the bowling reached hilarious levels in a Pak-SL match before the indpendence cup. SL won th match by 9 wickets. They just lost Jayasuriya. de Silva had scored a century (or 50+). They needed one to win and had plenty of overs to make them. de Silva was saving that one run for Atapattu who was hanging at 49. (Mind you Atapattu opened the innings and had a partnership with Jayasuriya !). The bowler sent down an express down the leg side. Left alone it would have been a wide, he had to stop it with the face of the bat. An edge may have run to the fence !

He moved his bat beyond his left leg, with a straight face and stopped it dead. Atapattu hit the winning run next over.

[Raghu]

I dont know much about Cricket terminologies, but he was delight to watch, being small in size, one wonders how he used to terrorise the bowlers, i remember in the 2000 (or something world cup) Lee was smashed to all over the park

1996 World Cup
De Silva did not play in Kent's two last County Championship matches having left to join the Sri Lankan squad on their tour of Pakistan. Sri Lanka had embarrassingly lost a first-class match against Pakistan Cricket Board Patron's XI and the following first Test against Pakistan both by an innings.[10] He joined the team only few days before the second Test and was dismissed for a duck in the first innings; however, in Sri Lanka's second innings his third wicket stand of 176 runs with Chandika Hathurusingha helped to win the Test for Sri Lanka.[11] Sri Lanka went on to win the third Test and clinch the Test series against Pakistan 2–1. Sri Lanka also proved victorious with the same numbers in the subsequent three-match ODI-series against Pakistan, where de Silva was Sri Lanka's leading wicket-taker with five wickets at an average of 17.80.[10][12]

In the three-nation Champions Trophy tournament in Sharjah in October 1995 with Pakistan and West Indies each team ended up with two wins and two losses in the preliminary round-robin stage, and West Indies and Sri Lanka were selected to play in the final due to their higher run rates. In the final Sri Lanka proved victorious by 50 runs. De Silva ended up with a modest 117 runs at an average of 29.25 in five matches.[13] His batting form slumped lower in the three-test Series in Australia, where the Sri Lankan batsmen struggled with the bowling of Glenn McGrath, who took 21 wickets while de Silva managed 98 runs at an average of 16.33. In the third test he acted as captain after the regular captain Arjuna Ranatunga pulled out due to finger injury. The series was shrouded in controversy, as in the first Test Sri Lanka was first found guilty of ball-tampering only to be exonerated later by International Cricket Council, while in the second Test the Australian umpire Darrell Hair no-balled Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralitharan seven times in just three overs for throwing.[14] Concurrently with the Test series Sri Lanka also participated in three-nation ODI series with Australia and West Indies. In the seventh match of the tournament against West Indies Muralitharan was again called for throwing and did not play again in the ODI series. The tournament was won by Australia, who beat Sri Lanka in both final matches, confirming their favourite position in the forth-coming ICC World Cup in the Indian sub-continent. In the absence of Ranatunga, de Silva captained Sri Lanka in the ODI tournament until Ranatunga returned in the later stages and finished the series as Sri Lanka's top batsman with 258 runs at an average of 25.80.[15]

In 1996 World Cup Sri Lanka, who hosted the cup together with India and Pakistan, played only three games in the preliminary rounds as both West Indies and Australia forfeited their matches in Colombo due to security reasons. Neither Zimbabwe nor Kenya were able to truly test Sri Lanka team – in both matches de Silva was selected man-of-the-match following his 91 and 145 runs with bat. De Silva's 145 from 115 balls against Kenya was the highest ever score for Sri Lanka in ODIs, and the third highest in 1996 World Cup. India proved a stronger opponent, but despite Sachin Tendulkar's 137 runs, Sri Lanka cruised to a comfortable six wicket victory.[16]

In the quarter-finals Sri Lanka defeated England by five wickets, the first time they had ever beaten England outside Sri Lanka.[17] The semi-final opponent was India, which had beaten Pakistan in their quarter-final match. Winning the toss at Eden Gardens, Calcutta, India selected to field and had a very good start with Javagal Srinath dispatching Sri Lankan opening pair for only one run. Playing at fourth batsman, de Silva lead the Sri Lankan recovery hitting 66 runs from 47 balls as Sri Lanka set the target of 252 runs. This 66 runs that does not really stand out in statistics tables, is however regarded as one of the finest innings by Aravinda. In their response, the batsmen of India failed to score with the exception of Tendulkar (65 runs).[18] After India had collapsed to 120 runs for 8 wickets at 34.1 overs, a densely-packed home crowd vented their anger by throwing bottles on to the outfield and setting fire to the seating. Eventually the match referee Clive Lloyd had to abandon the game and Sri Lanka won by default.[19]

However, the highlight of his career was almost certainly the 1996 World Cup Final against Australia, where he took 3 wickets for 42 runs (including the Australian captain Mark Taylor and the future captain Ricky Ponting), two catches and then followed that with 107 not out with the bat to secure Sri Lanka a convincing 7 wicket victory, thereby clinching the World Cup, and also the Man of the Match award.[20] His role in the final was recognised by Wisden in 2002 as the eight most significant batting performance in ODI cricket while his bowling was ranked 82nd in Wisden top 100 bowling chart.[21]

On 28 July 2007 he made a one-off appearance for a friend for Dorset county league side Sherborne.[22]

[Sanguine Sridhar]

Prabhu,

What happened to

His hook
His innings pacing
When he goes ballistic
The intelligent bowler that he is

[P_R]

Sridhar, I kinda covered some of the innings pacing in the last posts.

Aravinda's hook is stuff of legend. It is a myth that short batsmen can play the hook naturally. They are more suited to it that is all.
Nor is the hook only the preserve of short batsmen - Mohinder Amarnath was not noticeably short - but played the shot gloriously.

It is a shot that calls for split-second selection and fearlessness. Take your eye of the ball - which is on a scary trajectory - and you play an ill-controlled shot. Lobbing it to deep backward square or worse still square leg/fine-leg.Aravinda de Silva wore a grillless helmet and fearlessly hooked the fastest in the game. That too with such grace and control.

One of the rare times when I saw Wasim Akram being dominated by a batsman was in a match in Sharjah when he locked horns with Aravinda. Wasim very rarely changes his line to go from around to over to a right hander.He maintains the same annoying line. But de Silva tortured him so much that he moved to over the wicket and tried bowling short to cram him for room. That is a very difficult angle to hook as you are trying to hit the ball away from where it is naturally headed. Yet de Silva did exactly that.
There was the signature slight movement to his right from which he generated yards of room. Converting a perfect line ball into a wide short pathetic delivery that deserved the assault.

He is one of those batsmen you shouldn't watch and learn from. you simply can't. Only Aravinda fossible.

[P_R]

makkaLE, PM me nominees for the cricketers who you think should be up next here. Needless to say, those who are nominating would be contirbute significantly by writing about the cricketer.

[directhit]

The Peter Kirsten incident was like an eye-opener for us. In our gully cricket, we used to consider that as an *out*. Actually, we ground the ball first before removing the bails with it, for reasons unknown! We stopped doing that after that incident, though we still continued issuing warnings :P

Aamaam, Runout at the Bowler's end wud be one leg on the stone(no stumps available ) and catch the ball.... Ethukku ne theriyathu

current

nostalgic