Spare a thought for Test cricket and its players  

SLC CEO Ashley de Silva

Dimuth Karunaratne

Angelo Mathews

Dinesh Chandimal

• Sri Lanka to play only 5 Tests next year and 28 Tests in four years
• Senior players voice their opinions

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq  

Former captains Angelo Mathews and Dinesh Chandimal and present Test captain Dimuth Karunaratne are three of Sri Lanka’s leading batsmen who have set their goals of scoring 10,000 Test runs before they retire.

Mathews is the oldest at 35 and is the nearest to achieving that mark needing another 3,047 runs.

 Karunaratne, who is one year younger than Mathews, requires a further 3,977. Chandimal, who is 32, is not even halfway near the figure of 10,000 has accumulated 4936 runs, but has a lot of time on his hands being the youngest of the trio.

However, the big question is whether they have sufficient Test matches to achieve their goals?

The ICC has released the Future Tours Program (FTP) for the next four years (2023-2027), and in that period, Sri Lanka is billed to play only 28 Tests.

Comparatively, a country like Bangladesh has scheduled 34 Tests, India 38 with Australia and England playing the most with 40 and 43 respectively.

Sri Lanka Cricket’s emphasis on giving preference more to white ball cricket than the red has led to this paucity of Test matches for in the same five-year period Sri Lanka is due to play 52 ODIs and 54 T20Is.

Test cricket is the only format in which Sri Lanka has shown great improvement, and their current ranking at number three in the ICC World Test Championship only confirms their growing maturity with a young team. 

They recently beat countries like Australia, the no. 1 ranked Test side and Pakistan, ranked fifth in the ICC World Test Championship, victories which emphasize the progress they have made in this format.

Relatively, in white ball cricket, Sri Lanka’s record continues to be atrocious, unable to lift themselves from the lowly position of eighth in both formats due to their inconsistent selection policies and performances. 

So the question that needs to be asked is whether it is worthwhile pursuing two formats where the national team has more losses than wins in their bank rather than looking at a format where they have been successful and consistent and are on equal terms with the best in the world.

Sri Lanka Cricket’s CEO Ashley de Silva thinks otherwise.  

“You can play more Test matches but then again it depends on the windows which are available. When you schedule more Test matches you won’t have time to play the one-dayers and T20Is which have more commercial value to fulfil our commitments going forward,” said De Silva.

“According to the World Test Championship format we are supposed to play a minimum of 2 Test matches with all the countries that have been scheduled. If you schedule additional games and with the current windows available if you really look at it, we are playing a T20, the IPL window is reserved and other countries don’t play during that time, then we also play the T10 tournament.

“With all these tournaments which have been scheduled you have to find a window to play these Test matches. In addition to that we also have to play the ODIs and T20Is and on top of it the World Cups and Asia Cups where the commercial value is there. “So taking all this into consideration we have done a schedule where it will be more beneficial to us in both ways cricket-wise as well as commercially as well. If you look at the ODIs and the T20Is you’ll get more revenue coming. 

“We are playing 28 Test matches in the next four years but that does not mean we restrict it to 28. In the event, if there are any kind of gaps available we might even consider playing more Test matches because we are supposed to play a minimum of 25. That’s where we have worked it out accordingly.”

The downside is that Sri Lanka is scheduled to play only five Tests in 2023, nine in 2024, four in 2025, six in 2026 and four (up to March) in 2027.  

Mathews who, is 21 runs shy of overhauling Sanath Jayasuriya’s Test aggregate of 6973 runs to become the third highest in the list for Sri Lanka after Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene said: “It’s very disappointing, to say the least, to play only that many Test matches. How can you encourage people to take up Test cricket if you are not playing many Tests? We should all encourage youngsters to play Test cricket because that is the ultimate format.

“If we are to keep Test cricket alive we need to play more tests. Sri Lanka Cricket is trying to get us more Test matches, hopefully, they will, if not it’s very disappointing, to say the least. As a player, you would like to have as many Test matches as possible. Not only to achieve our targets, but as a team, we are in very good shape. 

“We played some excellent Test cricket over the last year or so and it is unfortunate that we are not playing a Test match for the next six to seven months (the next series is in New Zealand in Feb 2023). I understand the fact that there is a T20 World Cup coming up and everybody is giving priority to that, but to keep Test cricket alive we need to play more Test matches.”  

Chandimal said: “What will happen is the players if they cannot achieve their goals and ambitions playing Test cricket, will retire early. There is no point in playing Test cricket if you cannot attain your personal goals.

“I made my Test debut in 2011 and I have played only 70 Tests so far, England’s Jonny Bairstow started his Test career in 2015 and he has played 91 Tests. See the disparity. If we can get at least 35 Tests for the five-year period it will be good.”

Karunaratne said that he was 4,000 runs short of reaching 10,000 Test runs but to get there in 28 Tests won’t be easy.

“If you compare the FTP with other countries Bangladesh is scheduled to play 34 Tests, Zimbabwe 20 Tests, I can’t understand why Sri Lanka is playing only 28 Tests. 

“Does that mean that SLC is not giving priority to Test cricket? Our next Test series is only in March, after that we have a Test series in June, and after that, we have a Test match only in 2024. This way we cannot build a Test side, there won’t be much commitment to play Test matches,” said Karunaratne.

“In future, I don’t know whether any player would want to play Test cricket. If we play in all three formats our priority is Tests, going forward we will lose that because in future the players would prefer playing the shorter formats, and franchise cricket. 

“We have verbally told SLC and they have told us that they are doing their best to accommodate more Test matches. By playing fewer Test matches we stand to earn less money, so how can a Test player survive? I need only another 18 Tests to play 100 Tests for my country but to achieve that I must wait for another four years.”