Why was Mathews axed?
The world of cricket can sometimes be a confusing place. Recently, Angelo Mathews was hailed with the highest praise. Now we’re told that he’s not good enough to make it to Sri Lanka’s T20 squad.
Hoping to find justification for this move, I dug into some of Angie’s stats over the last few tournaments… you know, in case I may have missed a thing or two.
First, I glanced at the recently concluded ICC Cricket World Cup statistics. Surely our man would have made a couple of blunders in England and Wales? Perhaps a low average? Or a poor strike rate? Or even bad running between the wickets? There had to be something, right?
The page loads and there it was – the answers to my questions… or so I thought. Turns out he scored a total of 244 runs in seven games at an average of 40.66 to finish as Sri Lanka’s second best batsman in the tournament.
But wait, that can’t be right? He’d even had the audacity to score a century and a half-century.
Sitting there in a state of confusion, I told myself: ‘Ah! It must have been the Bangladesh series. Perhaps he didn’t return great figures there?’
The page loads and I fall off my chair. Three matches and 187 runs at an outstanding average of 93 a game. I was further sent into a web of confusion upon finding that he was the ‘Player of the Match’ in the last game and also the ‘Player of the Series.’
At this point, I wanted to taste whatever it was that our esteemed selectors were drinking or smoking. My mind tried once again to justify things with me. ‘Let’s be more rational,’ it said.
I figured it had to be his strike rate; after all, T20 cricket is a fast-paced game and there is no room for snail paced batting. I begin another round of research, hoping to see Mathews scoring at a dismal pace.
The page loads and the result pops up: ‘Son of a ...’ I contain my words. His strike rate is a staggering 118 per hundred balls.
In conclusion, there really isn’t any justification to axe Mathews who has been in sublime form.
‘What a conundrum,’ I thought to myself. The man had scored heaps of runs over the last couple of tournaments and there’s no place for him in Sri Lanka’s T20 squad. How come? I guess we’ll never know, will we?
Perhaps we will have to put this down to one of those unexplained mysteries of the universe like the Bermuda Triangle or the controversial Duckworth-Lewis scoring system?
Or maybe the selectors have a secret formula similar to the monthly fuel price mechanism adopted by the government? Who knows? There has to be some logic behind the madness, right?
Sri Lanka has a T20 World Cup around the corner. Of course, that’s only if we get past the qualifiers… and we wouldn’t be worthy of anything if we don’t get through. One understands the need for young blood in a squad but do you do that at the cost of your most experienced players in the format?
There has to be balance of maturity, talent, experience and selection polices. Young players should be given their fair share of time to grow around their seniors to eventually take over. At this point however, everything seems rather short-sighted and temporary.
One can only hope that things will change sooner rather than later while we pray for a miracle to happen.
Shyam Impett doesn’t understand why Angelo Mathews has been left out of the T20 squad