Sri Lanka are not having a lot of fun at the moment

IT’S HARDLY South Africa’s fault, but the visiting Sri Lankan ODI side have been a pale shadow of the Test outfit that surprised everyone just weeks ago.

The men in blue have been, to use a plainly SA term, rather ka*.

Their batting, especially, has been most frustrating. Lasith Malinga was tasked with the job of explaining their batting woes in Port Elizabeth.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. We are talking and talking about this, but the runs are not coming,” Malinga bemoaned.

Of course, Malinga, pictured, himself didn’t help matters when he got run out in frankly embarrassing circumstances, as he neglected to slide his bat at the non-striker’s end. When morale is already wilting, it is not a good look for the captain to appear to have his head a million miles away. “That was my fault,” he assessed. “I was trying to give the strike, and I just didn’t check to see which side the throw was coming. It was my fault. I hold my hands up for that.”

It doesn’t look like Sri Lanka are having a lot of fun at the moment, and the length of their tour appears to be writ on their faces. If not on their faces, then certainly in their actions. SA might have started the ODI series motivated to inflict damage on a team that had just rumbled them in the Test series, but they now realise they are playing themselves.

The most pertinent issues in this series have not been whether or not Sri Lanka might cause an upset.

Instead, the focus has been on which SA player stands out in a particular race for a World Cup slot.

Accordingly, the drama has been sucked out of the matches.

On a related note, hindsight may teach Cricket SA that these matches – especially against what might be classed as lesser opposition – would be better off taken to the less utilised international grounds in SA.

The Wanderers, Centurion and Newlands are bloated from a summer buffet of hosting gigs, and their normally healthy crowds have shrugged their shoulders at watching more of the same.

Paarl, Potchefstroom and the like might have sold out, on novelty alone.

The fact that one notices these small bones of contention, in the midst of the last bilateral series SA will play before the World Cup emphasises just how bang average Sri Lanka have been. Incredibly, even after the fifth ODI at Newlands tomorrow, the Proteas will see them again. Just before the World Cup.

In a warm-up fixture. Quite what they will learn then, after seeing the islanders so often, is anyone’s guess.

Sri Lanka have not even played within themselves. They’ve played without a plan. No care or conscience, save for Isuru Udana’s lower-order jaunt.

They’ve turned up, and been turned over. They have been tourists, in the most casual sense of the word.