ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2017

Sri Lanka in 2016/17 The period under review was a difficult one for Sri Lankan cricket as reflected not only in the struggles of the Test side but also, more fundamentally, in the turbulence and litigiousness affecting the administration of the game. The travails of the Test team are probably easier to relate. The side began the 2016/17 season’s Test programme with two Tests in Zimbabwe, both of which were won; and this visit was returned with a single Test in Sri Lanka in 2017, which the home side also won. Not long before this, at the end of the 2016/17 season, Sri Lanka had hosted Bangladesh and had won the first of the two Tests. And the blunt fact is that those matches – three against Zimbabwe and one against Bangladesh – accounted for all of Sri Lanka’s wins. The other seven Tests engaged in – three in South Africa, the second match against Bangladesh, and three at home against India in July and August 2017 – all resulted in defeats. And only the loss to Bangladesh was by a relatively narrow margin (four wickets): the defeats in South Africa were by 206 runs, 282 runs, and an innings and 118; while against India the margins were no better if not worse – 304 runs, an innings and 53, and an innings and 171. Virtually the only bright spot for Sri Lanka was the continued good form of the evergreen left-arm spinner Rangana Herath, who showed that even as he enters on his fortieth year he remains a highly effective performer, at least on wickets that (unlike those in South Africa) afford him any measure of encouragement. During the first Test against Bangladesh he surpassed Daniel Vettori’s career total of 362 wickets to become the most prolific slow left-armer in Test history. In all the circumstances Sri Lanka could consider themselves fortunate that they dropped only one place in the Test rankings, to seventh compared with sixth a year previously. The long-running problems that affect the administration of cricket in Sri Lanka are the subject of comment in the Preface and need not be laboured here. The decision to extend first-class status to Tier B of the Premier Tournament, itself highly questionable in terms of playing standards, gave rise to a quarrel of the kind that has repeatedly crippled cricket administration on the island. It concerned the right of Negombo Cricket Club to take part in Tier B, which was based on their having been awarded the Sara Trophy when rival club Sebastianites, the original winners, were disqualified for fielding ineligible players. Sebastianites now protested against Negombo’s proposed involvement and Sri Lanka Cricket responded by banning both sides from taking part, thus running Tier B with nine teams instead of ten as originally planned. The dispute rumbled on throughout the season and led to the very late cancellation of a major limited-overs tournament in which SLC had invested heavily. And all this is before we get to the major scandal of the season, which arose from the Tier B game between Panadura and Kalutara Physical Culture Centre in January. The final day witnessed some cricket that is perhaps most charitably described as unusual in character. In the equivalent of 60 overs no fewer than 607 runs were scored by the two sides as Panadura raced from 180-2 to 423 in 23.3 overs; Kalutara PCC, 33 ahead on first innings, then hit 197 off 22.5 overs; and finally Panadura made 167-7 to win off only 13.4 overs. SLC launched an inquiry into this obvious travesty, and eventually decided, in September, to void the ‘match and result’. The Tier B table below has been prepared on the assumption that this means that both teams have forfeited all their points from this match; however, in the absence of any ruling to the contrary it is still included as a first-class game on page 537. A notable, but less controversial, feature of Tier B is that it provided the first tie in the history of first-class cricket in Sri Lanka (see page 521). Tier A, meanwhile, proceeded on the same basis as in previous seasons. Fourteen teams played initially in two groups before the top four teams from each group separated to play a Super Eight competition to decide the overall winners, while the bottom three from each group played an equivalent Plate competition. Matches were scheduled for three days only, apart from the Super Eight games which were played over four days. 451