ACS Overseas First-Class Annual 2020

429 Sri Lanka in 2019/20 and 2020 After a particularly busy period on the Test front the previous season, things were much quieter for Sri Lanka in 2019/20. Only four Tests were played, all away from home, in two two-match series in Pakistan and Zimbabwe. Both series were of significance as much for where they were played as for anything that happened on the field of play.  The first, in December 2019, saw Sri Lanka become the first Test side to play in Pakistan since the Sri Lankans themselves over ten years previously. Pakistan was now judged to be once again a safe place for Test cricket; and so it proved. The Sri Lankan side were made welcome guests by their Pakistani hosts, but unfortunately not by the controllers of the weather, for a total of only 167 overs could be bowled in the momentous first Test of the series, and neither side had any chance to claim the ascendancy. In the second match Sri Lanka took a first-innings lead but were beaten by 263 runs after a blistering batting performance by Pakistan second time round. At least Oshada Fernando had a chance to make a maiden Test century when Sri Lanka batted a second time, but without his 102 and wicketkeeper Dickwella’s 65 their second-innings total of 212 would have been sorry indeed. Although a couple of places above Pakistan in the ICC rankings at the time, Sri Lanka’s 1-0 defeat in a series so significant for their hosts was no disgrace.  The series in Zimbabwe the following month produced the same scoreline, this time in Sri Lanka’s favour. In the first Test, former captain Angelo Mathews – played these days as a batsman only - recorded a popular maiden Test 200 as his side won by ten wickets despite stern last-day resistance from their opponents. That same spirit was in evidence among the Zimbabweans in the second Test too, where they took a first-innings lead of 113 and later declared their second innings to set Sri Lanka 361 to win on the last day. Had this been a match in the World Test Championship there would have been league points at stake, and an incentive for Sri Lanka to take up the challenge. But Zimbabwe do not compete in the WTC, and Sri Lanka chose to bat out the day for a tame draw.  Mathews’ double-century apart, none of Sri Lanka’s batsmen did much to write home about across their two series – though with steady scoring throughout, none did anything to harm his personal reputation either. The most successful bowler was a relative newcomer, slow left-armer Lasith Ambuldeniya, who took 18 wickets in the three Tests in which he played. But they came at an expensive average of 39.72 and at an economy rate of nearly 3.6 runs per over. With such a proliferation of successful slow left-armers in the domestic game, the position as the Test side’s specialist spinner remains up for grabs.  At the end of the 2020 summer, Sri Lanka stood fifth in the ICC Test rankings – one place higher than a year previously, that place being gained in the annual recalculation in May. They were sixth in the World Test Championship table, having played fewer qualifying series than any of the sides above them.  Sri Lanka had expected to play one further Test series in 2019/20, a two-match home series against England beginning in March 2020. The tourists had already played one practice match and started another, and the Sri Lankan Test squad had already been named, when the Covid pandemic caused the series to be called off just six days before it was due to begin; the same factor also accounted for the three-Test tour by Bangladesh planned for July and August 2020. The pandemic also had a major effect on the domestic programme. The intended pattern for the sole domestic competition, the Premier League, was broadly the same as in recent years, with seven teams competing in each of two groups in Tier A, and twelve (rather than last year’s nine, and including two newcomers to first-class cricket) in Tier B. By mid-March Tier A had completed its Group phase, and Tier B seven of its scheduled eleven rounds of matches, when it was decided that the remainder of the competition should be – not called off, as in many other countries, but just ‘postponed’. At the end of July Sri Lanka Cricket announced that the Super Eight and Plate rounds of Tier A would be completed over the coming month, with all four-day matches reduced to three days. There was no express statement concerning Tier B, but the announcement that provisions