We have to do is start from the bottom: Sanath Jayasuriya

Sanath Jayasuriya, who joined again as the chief selector, has said Sri Lanka’s new selectors will have to “start from the bottom. ” Jayasuriya previously served as the chief selector from February 2013 to March 2015, before his panel was succeeded by Kapila Wijegunawardene’s. Subsequently, the committee was wrapped and Jayasuriya was brought back as the chief score. Jayasuriya helped select the Test squad to England.

“I did everything 100% for Sri Lankan cricket,” Jayasuriya told BBC Sinhala. “But if even a little was detracted from that work, then we would have had substantial setbacks because of that. Now what we have to do is start from the bottom. There is a bigger responsibility for me in this stint than there was when I was first a selector.”

Sri Lanka has defeated a Full-Member side only once this year, beating India in a T20I in Pune. During Jayasuriya’s first tenure, the team had won the 2014 World T20 and a Test series in England, before losing in New Zealand, and making a quarter-final exit in the 2015 World Cup. Jayasuriya said he accepted part of the “responsibility” for a poor showing in the World Cup, but suggested the situation had only worsened since then.

“First, we need to look at which players had been chosen in the past,” he said. “Sometimes you pick young players and then later, these players are dropped and fresh players are brought in. When fresh players are brought in, it takes them a while to succeed, and the players you had been investing in are ignored. That is what happened there.”

Jayasuriya did not specify which players he believes should have been given a consistent run in the team. In the Test side, Kaushal Silva and Niroshan Dickwella fell out of favor during Wijegunawardene’s tenure, while leg-spinning all-rounder Seekkuge Prasanna was largely left out of the limited-overs teams.

However, Wijegunawardene’s committee had also handed debuts to players such as Milinda Siriwardana, Kusal Mendis, Dasun Shanaka and Dhananjaya de Silva, each of whom are currently in the Test squad Jayasuriya helped pick.

“When a new selection committee comes, they should talk with the old committee and discuss the good things that we did. If we did good things for Sri Lankan cricket, those policies should be taken forward. That must not have happened at the time, for us to be in this position.”

The Sri Lanka squad departs for the three-Test series in England, on Wednesday.

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