There were a lot of retirements from the Test cricket this year. Like Ryan Sidebottom, Shane Bond and all. Biggest of them was Muttaih Muralitharan of Sri Lanka. When he was around, SL were invincibles at home and continued to lamb abroad. Now with him no more bagging the whites, they are still continuing to play Test cricket and finding it difficult to win a test match cos they dont have the luxury to take 20 wikats anymore.
Evidence: they failed to bowl out India and West Indies in subsequent 5 Test matches after Murali retired. So much pissed off was Sangakara, that he called this tests as worst of his life. He'd be making runs in tons and thousands on flat pancake pitches in Lanka, but those runs wont count as they wont get him 20 wickets required to win the test match. Next year end they are slotted to tour SA by year end and SA have great chance to end the irritating habit of losing Boxing Day tests in Durban.
So why is SL even planning to play Test cricket? They dont have the bowlers to take 20 wkts and to hide this inefficiency the likes of Paravarariritana, Sangakara, Samarweera and of course the baap of them all Jayawardhena continue to make runs and bat longer. Much like gully cricket when a rowdy team refused to declare and continued to bully the lesser teams or touring teams in the home "gully".
2010 they played 6 tests and won just 1. They did not play against BD as they refused to tour SL every 2nd or 3rd month.
Now they are planning a test series against Pakistan. However hopeless Pakistan might be against other teams, but when it comes to SL, some of their bowlers -- known or debutants manage to get heapfuul of wickets.
Wasim Akram took 2 hattricks in Tests, all against SL in back to back tests.
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