Colombo, Kandy hot favourites

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Dimuth Karunaratne (Colombo captain)

Dhananjaya de Silva (Jaffna captain)

Dinesh Chandimal (Galle captain)

Kamindu Mendis (Kandy captain)

The semi-finals of the National Super League 4-day commencing tomorrow will be a repeat of the opening weekends matches of the tournament Colombo v Jaffna at the Mahinda Rajapaksa International Cricket Stadium and Kandy v Galle at the Pallekele International Cricket Stadium.

The two opening matches ended in draws but Jaffna and Kandy took the honours by grabbing first innings points.

Since that meeting Colombo has improved in leaps and bounds to top the league with three consecutive wins over Dambulla, Kandy and Galle to emerge as the team to beat in the competition.

They start strong favourites against a Jaffna side that has not lived to their early promise when they ran up the highest total in the tournament – 555, but has since then their performances has simply wilted with scores of 318, 254, 224, and 379 against bottom of the table Dambulla.

Jaffna who won the NSL 50-over tournament will need to lift their game if they are to get the better of a high riding Colombo side that has the national Test captain Dimuth Karunaratne leading them from the front. Karunaratne smacked an unbeaten century in their successful run chase against Galle which catapulted them to the top of the league standings. Colombo also have another top order batter in the shape of Kusal Mendis who failed to fire in the last game, but is capable of delivering when the stakes are high.

Colombo is well served in the bowling front as well with three of their bowlers figuring in the top five. Left-arm spinner Prabath Jayasuriya has been in his element – his match bag of 11 wickets in their last game against Galle taking him past another similar bowler Malinda Pushpakumara (24 wickets) to become the leading wicket-taker with 26 wickets (avg. 22.15). Off-spinner Lakshitha Manasinghe (15) and national fast bowler Kasun Rajitha (11) are the others.

Jaffna is led by another national player Dhananjaya de Silva who has in his midst two other team mates - fast bowler Nuwan Pradeep and leg-spinner Jeffrey Vandersay. Pradeep produced his best spell of bowling in first-class cricket with a haul of seven wickets in an innings against Dambulla last weekend, a performance which enabled Jaffna to gain vital first innings points and secure a semi-final berth.

Apart from a defeat at the hands of Colombo, Kandy has looked the next most successful team in the tournament. Although they failed to win any of their matches outright, Kandy did well enough to grab first innings points in their matches against Galle, Jaffna and Dambulla to finish second in the league standings.

Kandy is led by the man in form Kamindu Mendis who is the leading run-getter of the tournament with 649 runs inclusive of six scores of over fifty in eight innings. Kandy also has three other batters in the top six of the tournament – national cap Oshada Fernando (476 runs), Sahan Arachchige (363), Lahiru Udara (343). These four batsmen form the middle order of the Kandy batting and Galle will be mindful that if they are to get close to winning, they will have to first dismantle them as early as possible.

Galle led by former Sri Lanka captain Dinesh Chandimal have the capacity to match whatever total that Kandy may come up with having made 465 in the opening game against Kandy and following that up with totals of 513 and 444-9 decl. but their fragility lies in their bowling where spinners national cap Akila Dananjaya, Chanaka Ruwansiri and Suminda Lakshan will have to shoulder a lot of responsibility to keep the strong Kandy batting within reasonable limits.

A good four days of cricket is on the cards with the four teams mindful of the fact that if they get through this stage, they have the chance to lay their hands on prize money worth Rs. 7.5 million.