Sri Lanka know what they had and they know that it has gone

We're not sure in the case of Sri Lanka that they didn't know what they had until Muttiah Muralitharan had retired and gone, but even they probably didn't realise how bad it would be without their spin genius.

If things carry on as they are, then Sri Lanka's fall from cricket's top table may make the demise of the West Indies look positively pedestrian in comparison.

With no Murali, no Chaminda Vaas and no Lasith Malinga for Test matches, Sri Lanka's bowling attack is about as dangerous as a pack of chihuahuas trying to take on an especially large, vicious and hungry tyrannosaurus rex.

If it wasn't for the fact that in Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, Sri Lanka possess two of the finest batsmen of their generation then we would already be talking about the 1996 World Champions in the same breath as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe.

But for some particularly bad weather in England and a gem of an innings by Sangakkara at the Rose Bowl, the series with England would probably have ended as a whitewash in favour of the home side.

Then a rebuilding Australia built them more comfortably on their home patch then the 1-0 scoreline suggests.

Now they are struggling badly against an improving but still limited Pakistan side with Sangakkara again saving their skins in the 1st Test with a battling double hundred. Their last win came in Murali's final Test at Galle - 13 Tests ago.

Sangakkara himself highlighted that the Sri Lankan board have taken their eye off the ball in recent years and succession planning for the likes of Murali, Vaas, Sangakkara and Jayawardene seems to have been completely forgotten.

The success of Sri Lanka in winning the World Cup and then reaching the last two finals as well as regularly being high up in the ICC rankings for the last 15 years has been a case of David triumphing regularly over Goliath.

Sadly, it seems those giantkilling days are long gone and the future looks very bleak indeed.

Where next?

Kumar Sangakkara's captivating story of cricket in Sri Lanka

Sri Lankan cricket heroes: Aravinda de Silva, Sanath Jayasuriya, Muttiah Muralitharan

All hail King Mahela of Colombo

Who writes Muttiah Muralitharan's scripts?

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Comments

[Chrisps]

Sri Lanka are on the slide and their Board are said to be negligent. But isn't this cyclical - reversion to the mean - for a small nation?Succession planning for the likes of Murali and Malinga could be beyond the most competent cricket administrations. When Warne was in his ascendancy, plentiful were the descriptions of the young Australians inspired to take up leg-spin bowling. That seems to have produced very little. Maybe none of them was any good. After all, a player like Warne (or Murali) only comes along once every few generations. I think we can overstate the role systems have in the arrival (or not) of top cricketers.

Chrisps http://chrispscricket.wordpress.com

[The Reverse Sweep]

True Chrisps, Murali like Warne is a once in a generation bowler, but the SL Board has definitely taken its eye off the ball in developing a pipeline of talent - their current bowling stock is woeful and wouldn't look out of place in a County 2nd XI line-up