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The Liebke Ratings: Sri Lanka v Australia second ODI

Steve Smith was disappointed with his team's performance. They need to focus more. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Expert
25th August, 2016
7

Australia somehow won the forst ODI of this five-match series against Sri Lanka. Naturally, this couldn’t last.

Here are the ratings from the second ODI.

Spin Bowling
Grade: D

Australia had witnessed first-hand how effective spin bowling had been on this tour, in much the same way that any victim of a brutal assault is also technically a witness to that same assault.

So it was no surprise to see that Josh ‘No Wickets’ Hazlewood had been omitted from this game in favour of Nathan Lyon. And it was equally no surprise to see Steve Smith cycle rapidly through his spinners, with Lyon, Travis Head, Aaron Finch and Adam Zampa all making their way in turn to the bowling crease. Although it was very much a surprise to see Finch included in that list of spinners – not least of all to Finch.

Australia saw early spin success when Lyon bowled Tillakaratne Dilshan behind his legs. The wicket was so geometrically startling that Dilshan stood his ground, assuming that keeper Matthew Wade had committed some kind of behind-the-stumps shenanigans to dislodge the bail. A perfectly reasonable hypothesis, but not true in this instance.

But after this wicket, Dinesh Chandimal and Kusal Mendis then put on a 125-run partnership in just 126 balls, and Smith could do nothing more than shake his head in frustration.

You could hardly blame him. Pretty much every Australian fan watching wanted to shake his Head in frustration, especially when Travis’s first over cost twenty runs.

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Matthew Wade
Grade: C

Around about this point, Adam Zampa was reintroduced into the attack. “Madam, I’m Zampa,” he said, by way of faulty palindrome and incorrect gender assessment introduction.

It’s difficult to be too harsh on Zampa for such obvious greeting errors, however. For one thing, he takes wickets, which earns a lot of forgiveness points. For another, he’s got a history of fielding the ball with his face.

Here, he suddenly took three quick wickets to halt the Sri Lankan momentum as the home side slumped to 5/158 in the 31st over. Easily the best wicket of the three was the one where Wade completely flubbed a stumping, and possibly dropped a catch, only to salvage the situation by somehow procuring a DRS LBW when his embarrassed insistence that Smith review the decision to take attention away from his fumbling glovework bizarrely came up trumps.

Great modern wicket-keeping from Wade. Would Adam Gilchrist have ever attained a wicket in such a manner? Not in a million deliveries.

Later, James Faulkner took a hat trick to become only the sixth Australian to do so in ODIs. But did Wade rush over to congratulate him? Nope. Because he still remembers the time Brad Haddin was poked in the eye by an out-of-control Faulkner high-five.

Wade, then, has proven himself to be a superior keeper to Australia’s last two long-term glovemen. Oh, sure, he leaks byes and drops catches. But I think that’s just because he’s weighed down by expectations.

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Sorry, mistyped that.

I meant to say that it’s because he’s Wade, down by expectations.

Kusal Perera
Grade: B+

A few years ago, Australia stacked their team with Mitches and Marshes and eventually went on to become the number one Test team in the world for almost a week and a half.

Sri Lanka have taken that tactic and tweaked it to make their own, working instead with Kusals (Kusal Mendis and Kusal Perera) and Pereras (Kusal Perera, Thisara Perera and Dilruwan Perera).

The Sri Lanka breakdown for this match was then:

Pereras: 3
Kusals: 2
Kusal Pereras: 1
Non-Kusal Pereras: 2
Kusal Non-Pereras: 1
Non-Kusal Non-Pereras: 7
Non-(Kusal Pereras): 10

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Australia never stood a chance.

The ultimate combination of Kusals and Pereras, Kusal Perera, took the game away from Australia with the bat, making 54 from 53, as Sri Lanka were eventually bowled out for 288,

Mitchell Starc cleaned up the tail in usual fashion, ending up with three wickets. It might have been more, but the umpires had chastised him early in the game for hurling a return throw in the direction of the batsman.

Hardly seems fair. If the umpires take away Starc’s right to throw the ball at batsmen it totally removes one of his main wicket-taking deliveries.

Frustrated Steve Smith
Grade: A

Frustrated Steve Smith has rapidly become my favourite cartoon character. While Australia were fielding, he grumped it up in classic fashion, perceiving every long-hop, dropped catch and botched run out as a personal attack on him.

When it was his turn to bat, he took similar offence at puffs of dust on the pitch, balls that turned more than he would have liked and, ultimately, his own spooned catch to mid-on.

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Why in blazes doesn’t everything just work out exactly the way Steve Smith wants it to work out?!?

I’m pleased to hear the selectors are resting him for the T20 series. The poor guy desperately needs a good lie down.

Amila Aponso
Grade: A-

Amila Aponso made his ODI debut in the first game of this series. In this second match, he took 4/18 to utterly scupper any slim chance Australia might have had of running down the target, removing Smith, Faulkner, Zampa and George Bailey as Australia were bowled out for 206.

Surely it’s unfair for Sri Lanka to have a seemingly endless supply of match-winning spinners in these conditions. When will the ICC step in and stamp out this blatant cheating?

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