At the end of a hard-fought day’s cricket in Colombo, where neither team could claim full control of the game, Sri Lanka bowling coach Ryan van Niekerk was all praise for Asitha Fernando. The 29-year-old right-arm pacer bent his back and gave it his all through a trying day in sweltering heat, walking away with three of the five Indian wickets to fall.
“I think Asitha, I like to tease him in the team space… he’s a bit like a diesel engine. The more he goes, the better he gets and the longer he goes. From his point of view, it’s actually putting in the time of bowling a lot,” Niekerk said.
“He’s got an incredible skill set and amazing accuracy when he bowls. If we can get him bowling for long periods of time, that’s the key to his success that I’ve seen in my time with him.”
Fernando bowled 16 of the 85 overs bowled on the day, split into five separate short bursts: he started with four overs on the trot and then came back for three-over spells. Niekerk reckoned it was important to find the balance between unleashing him and holding him back at the right times to take care of his workloads.
“In the West Indies, he had come off a knee injury. He was sitting in a space where he hadn’t bowled a lot, and Test cricket requires a big build-up. He had a one-day series which had two rained-off games, so he wasn’t able to get a lot of those overs in,” Niekerk said.
“Since that West Indies series, he had a huge spell in that first Test and that second Test as well. The more he’s bowled, the better he gets. From our point of view, it’s just managing his loads as well as possible and making sure that he gets enough bowling time in,” he added.
A big share of Sunday’s success was also down to how Sri Lanka captain Dhananjaya de Silva used his quicks. The memo to both Fernando and Lahiru Kumara was to go hard and aggressive on a pitch offering extra bounce, but there was also a need to be mindful of not running either bowler into the ground. The weather conditions were particularly hostile for a bowler running in from a long way out and putting his body into bowling fast. Fernando, though, managed to do it to the best of his abilities, keeping fatigue at bay throughout and still finding a way to strike even in his final spell in the last session.
Niekerk put that down to Dhananjaya’s relationship with his pacers and his match smarts on how to space them out. “Dhananjaya has played 70 Tests. He’s incredibly experienced. He’s seen a lot of these conditions before in different parts of the world. In home conditions, he understands how to manage the bowling group. And in general, from experience, he’s had less seamers to work with most of the time. And the spinners have done their job.
“So, I think he’s managed the seamers incredibly well. He’s got a good relationship with them. You know, good captains know where to get the best out of their seamers at the right time and how to actually fire them up for spells. Graeme Smith comes to mind with Dale Steyn and how to manage them and get the best out of them at different times,” Niekerk added.
After his initial four-over spell, Fernando was replaced by Prabath Jayasuriya before being summoned again in the 15th over, where he bowled three overs on the trot. This was when he got Yashasvi Jaiswal – a dismissal that snowballed into a confrontation between the two. Fernando’s next entry point came just after Lunch, where he peppered Padikkal with short balls. Much to his chagrin, the India No.3 didn’t fight back. At the end of this spell, he picked no wickets and was left utterly drained, but walked off to applause from his teammates.
Fernando came back for an over before Tea and broke the 120-run stand with the wicket of Shubman Gill. He then delivered two more tight overs on the other side of the break. In the final session, he got a length ball to swing and seam back into an unsuspecting Ravindra Jadeja, who offered judgment and had his off-stump knocked back.
Fernando finished the day with figures of 15-5-46-3. The truth behind the efforts he put in lay in the finer details: 31 of his 90 deliveries were short balls. Though he didn’t pick a wicket off them, he kept coming back to deliver them again and again in search of an error. He bowled 36 deliveries in the 6-8m zone, picking all three wicket from it for just six runs.
It was a memorable day at home for the pacer but the job isn’t done. Niekerk is optimistic about his efforts — and Kumara’s — getting Sri Lanka going early on Day 2, when they will bowl with a ball that is only five overs old. “We’ve still got a new ball in the morning to use and hopefully a fairly fresh Asitha and Lahiru to start the day. So if we can make some early inroads, that would be fantastic for us,” Niekerk said.
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