With his effervescent character and homespun technique, Dinesh Chandimal embodies something of the island spirit – as well as the fight his team had lost
Andrew Fidel Fernando at Chester-le-Street30-May-2016″Sri Lankan players have a lot of fight,” said coach Graham Ford of the team he had been desperate to return to. “Sri Lanka generally fight hard,” an England player said through the course of the series. “We fight till the last ball,” Angelo Mathews occasionally used to announce when his team were struggling. Recently it has become all he says.And in a way, Sri Lanka’s batsmen had been in the fight of their lives in the first three innings this series. They had practically declared war on their own averages. Professional reputations were left bloody and twitching in two different north-of-England cities.But in five batting sessions at Chester-le-Street, when a more traditional Sri Lankan fight took shape, it was no surprise that Dinesh Chandimal was the man most effective at getting his team back on brand. He was lively. He took on risks. He wrung runs out of the lower order. Thanks to Chandimal, Mathews even got to say the words “Sri Lankan fight” at the post-match press conference, and for the first time in the past month, his words were not speculative.Chandimal is a quintessentially Sri Lankan cricketer. In his background are details that island novelists transpose on their protagonists – the hard beginnings, the tsunami, the fortuitous scholarship to a big Buddhist school, his subsequent success as Ananda College’s captain. In his technique are glimpses of the coastal curve he hails from – the beach cricketer’s booming bottom hand, the loose drives and fluttering homespun cuts that somehow pass through cover.Mathews pleased with fight
“We talked about everything possible to get back on track. We talked about our character and the fight. We’ve been talking a lot about it, but unfortunately we didn’t show it on the field. I thought we started showing it in the second innings while we were batting. We had a brilliant first day. We caught all our catches. But unfortunately started off day two by letting Moeen Ali and Chris Woakes off the hook. Then we had a really bad day and we had to fight really hard. I thought all the batters worked really hard in the nets every single day before the start.”
Coaches attempted to iron out his crinkles in 2013 and 2014 and, like any good Sri Lankan boy, he paid heed. He changed his grip and discovered he could no longer face the short ball. He had exclusive lessons with the batting coach, and found himself having trouble facing team-mates. When he turned down a $100,000 offer from the IPL to focus on his training, Chandimal was becoming something of a company man.It was only when he changed tack that runs began to flow again, yet in his cricket, the lessons lapped up in youth survive. He is easily the most effervescent on the field when he keeps wickets. He scoops up the helmets and sprints from end to end while others are flagging after a long day or a large defeat.At Chester-le-Street, as his team stared at another humiliation, Chandimal produced the kind of innings Sri Lankan players are told Sri Lankan players produce. When Alastair Cook set traps for him on the leg side, Chandimal didn’t avoid those areas of the ground. Instead, he kept shuffling across his stumps and backing himself to beat the fielders. Another England captain had put men on the leg-side fence for Duleep Mendis in Sri Lanka’s first match in the country. Mendis kept hooking bowlers into the stands until he had a triple-figure score. These stories, dressed up and embellished, have passed into lore for fans, but have become the manual for players such as Chandimal.At the other end, another Sri Lankan battler kept England out, and Chandimal company for 116 runs. After Chandimal struck the 162 not out that saw Sri Lanka turn around a 193-run first-innings deficit against India last year, it was Rangana Herath’s spin that closed out that manic Galle victory. Here he provided an example for his batting colleagues.”Absolutely, the other batsmen can take lessons from Rangana,” Mathews said. “He’s become a proper No. 8 for us over the past one-and-a-half years. He’s been scoring and hanging in there. If I recall, a couple of years ago at Headingley, once again he batted with me and got 49. He’s been giving his best with the bat and ball for us over the last couple of years. Every day he’s been trying to get better.”The partnership only delayed the defeat. It merely dressed up what was in fact another Test thumping for a struggling team. But in the reclaiming of a cricketing identity – real or imagined – Chandimal repeatedly leads the way. For a few moments on the fourth day, in the north of England were snatched peeks of a tropical island.
