It was really great to see two cricket teams from Asia fighting it out in the 2009 T/20 World Cup Final, at Lords. Although we were the favourite to win the trophy, lady luck failed to smile on us. The main contributor to our total right along, the player of the tournament, who scored 317 runs, Tilekeratne Dilshan failed to score even a single run on this fateful day. The shrewd Pakistani captain placed a fielder right at the place his ‘Dil-scoops’ were expected to land and it was grabbed with thanks. This shocked nearly every spectator. Then followed the procession to the pavilion one after the other until Angelo Mathews arrived to join the captain to build a very useful partnership. We are disappointed by the failure of our senior players in the tournament and two other players namely, Chamara Silva and Jehan Mubarak who did nothing but were automatic choices for all seven matches we played. The selectors might claim it was the winning combination but our question is what did these two contribute to our six previous victories?

They never tried Saram or Maharoof who is ideally suited, being an all rounder.

We beat Australia, West Indies (twice), Ireland, New Zealand and Pakistan but we miserably failed to beat the last named team on the most important day. T/20 and ODI are essentially meant for youngsters and T/20 especially for players under 30 years. Pakistani captain Younis Khan who is in his mid thirties has announced his retirement from T/20 matches saying that he is too old for the game. With all respect to our evergreen Sanath, I do not understand his decision to retire from playing Test matches and to continue playing T/20 and ODI. We did not see any consistency in our players during the tournament except from Dilshan. It was his bad luck that he failed to deliver in the finals and that there was a fielder placed to cover.

In all we were short of just another 35 runs! Mahela, Sanath and the usual failures Chamara and Mubarak all failed to contribute. It was really disgusting to see how they performed on an important day like this. I hope that this will be a good lesson for the selectors but the million dollar question is; will they ever learn from this?