Dorey has bowled well below what was asked of him and now the selectors can't really risk a repeat performance. I do believe he is normally somewhat more accurate, but for whatever reason he isn't settling into the top level. Similarly with Hopes, who usually keeps to a restrictive line and length, bowled very loose today, perhaps unsettled by Jayasuriya's vengeance. I agree with Aussie1st about taking a spinner to the SCG, especially when you drop one of your best bowlers. Same as in NZ and in a similar situation in The Ashes, you can't walk into a match with a bunch of support bowlers.
In England, everyone knew Kasprowicz and Gillespie weren't up to scratch and they were persisted with in the absence of McGrath. Hoping for them to fire up wasn't a really bad thing except that it was at the complete expense of Stuart MacGill's talents.
In New Zealand, the idea was to rest McGrath and test out some alternative players. When the series was won, Lee too was sent home (well, they said it was some kind of illness, but whatever). This left the team with Nathan Bracken essentially to carry the attack built of Clark, Lewis, Johnson, White and Symonds. White and Symonds were hardly going to provide impressive change-of-pace options and Lewis, Johnson and Clark between them still have less than 10 matches of ODI experience. Even if the selectors were to find a magical superpower out of the 3 untested pacemen, it was still an enormous risk and all we really learnt from the experiment is that an underpowered attack on a small ground gets smacked.
The way I see it, if you lose your best tall right arm medium-fast bowler, you can't simply replace him with some other tall right arm medium-fast bowler and hope to get away with it. Don't replace him with a player of the same type, unless they have the quality. The summer has seen four new pacemen get a run, but extraordinarily Cameron White is the only new face in the spin department.
Anyway, the selectors are obviously prepared to lose a few games in the pursuit of getting their lesser pacemen experience. Perhaps I should be patient and see what changes occur for the next match. I hope Lewis gets another call up though.
This match however, was well played. Jayasuriya was sublime to watch, particularly through and over point. Still, many times it looked as though Australia would recover with the bat, but Sri Lanka produced the big blows at crucial moments, in particular the run outs of Symonds and Hussey. Bandara bowled quite well, a good example of a spin talent who has brought strike power. Hopefully for SL, Perera gets a long, healthy career, he is very good. Murali on the other hand I don't think is in very good form.
Now back to Jayasuriya, I thought I heard he was going to miss the whole VB series, but now he is playing (and certainly doesn't look injured). Can anyone explain fully what his injury was and how long he was expected to miss?
I take Symonds is injuried as Hussey is batting above him.
