World Cup 2023: Open-chested predator Lahiru Kumara destroys England | Cricket-world-cup News

In his Twitter intro, Lahiru Kumara describes himself as “a strongly built right arm quick bowler. Gasman Lahiru.” No one quite knows the genesis of the Gasman epithet, or who named him thus. The common reference is that he could bowl at high pace all through the day. Some others think it’s because he is imposingly built, like a Marvel superhero.
Whatever be the origins, he was his country’s Gasman against England, bowling 10 mean overs of sustained aggression and hostility. Pace was always his biggest gift once he chanced to lay his hands on a cricket ball. The path he chose was incidental. He was a hockey player in his teens, but after a cut he sustained on his forehead when playing the sport, his mother burned the hockey gear. He then just walked into the nets in his school and started revving up a serious pace. Last time when India toured Sri Lanka for a Test series, then bowling coach Champake Ramanayake would rave about a stocky bowler in the nets. “See, he is easily clocking 140 kph, in a couple of years he could be touching 150kph,” he would aver. that time, he had already made his debut in Tests, in Zimbabwe.
You could see where he gets the pace from. From that barrel chest and oak-like shoulders. The run-up is but a leisurely stroll. The leap is non-exent, much like his country’s most celebrated white-ball phenom, Lasith Malinga. But in his load-up, his giant shoulders whirr into action, producing frightening pace. Though he is not too tall or has a high-arm action, he hits the deck so hard that he generates substantial bounce. His pace and bounce hustled and harried all English batters, and throughout the day, except when he attempted the cutters and slower balls, he hovered in the 140 kph region.
But often in the past, he could not marry his pace with discipline and direction, a reason he could bleed plenty of runs. In his only other game of the tournament, he leaked 47 runs in four overs, against Australia. He has conceded 6.54 runs an over in 27 previous outings, putting coaches in a dilemma whether to pick him or not. “So I did a lot of spot training, day in and day out so that I was able to strike good lengths. This was the biggest concern before the World Cup,” he would later say.
Besides, he is horribly injury prone. On a larger note, this has been the plight of Sri Lanka’s new crop of fast bowlers. There is no shortage of potential, but most are wracked with injuries and are not the perfect models of discipline. But on Friday, he as well as the largely green Lankan colleagues blended pace with aggression and discipline.
Cricket – ICC Cricket World Cup 2023 – England v Sri Lanka – M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru, India – October 26, 2023 Sri Lanka’s Lahiru Kumara celebrates after taking the lbw wicket of England’s Liam Livingstone REUTERS/Andrew Boyers
Making Kumara deadlier was the seam movement he generated off the surface, slower but bouncier. He foxed Jos Buttler with a hint of away movement that induced an inside edge, though Buttler’s drive was both expansive and injudicious. He would then blast the pad of Liam Livingstone, with a nip-backer, his stock ball. Everything in his action sets him up perfectly for the back-bender to the right-handers. The snap of the wrs powers the ball with the devilish skid he bargains off the surface. A more famous in-ducker had accounted for Hashim Amla in Cape Town, where he snaffled a six-four. He would later credit this wicket for making him believe that he has the quality to bowl in Test cricket. But such moments would arrive few and far between, in between long pauses of injuries and his own inconsency.
He was a man possessed, a riot of wild emotions. He would scream and snarl, scowl and gnarl as he pumped up relentless on-your-face aggression. Thus, in the space of a match, he transformed from a puzzle to his country’s lead bowler. He preserved his best for Ben Stokes, who he repeatedly beat with the away-seamers and the ones that went with the angle. In the end, he consumed him with a short-ball. The ball, again, was quicker than Stokes had thought and he could not get the requisite power into the stroke. Kumara celebrated with a kiss into the skies and struck a triumphant pose for the cameras. “Stokes was my favourite wicket,” he would say.
Not just Kumara, the entire crew of Lanka’s bowlers put in an inspired show. Dilshan Madhushanka, the left-armer in his eleventh ODI, produced swing into the right-hander and had Jonny Bairstow trapped leg before the wicket of the first ball of the game, though both the umpire and his colleagues thought he had nicked, only for the replays to show there was no wood. The expensive figures do no justice to the torment he subjected the England batters with the new ball.Most Read
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Like Kumara, Kasun Rajitha too has copped criticism for his waywardness in his 30-match ODI career. But he too pounded stifling lengths, built pressure and bargained the ball wickets of Jonny Bairstow and Chris Woakes.

Holding them together was the seasoned Angelo Mathews. No longer his country’s talisman he once was, he coolly put in a throwback shift. The waline has expanded, the movements are not as athletic as they used to be. The thick curls have thinned. But he dug deep from the wealth of experience to produce the first breakthrough. Sri Lanka’s bowlers had begun to wither after a robust start when Mathews struck first. He consumed Dawid Malan with a classic away nibbler, merely 125 kph, but so precise that Malan was forced to commit and the away movement kissed his edge. He would then effect a sharp run out, flinging in a quick throw from point to the keeper Kusal Mendis, who caught Joe Root short of the crease.
From that moment, Sri Lanka’s pacemen and the thrifty trickster Maheesh Pathirana got a vice-like grip on the match and ensured that they didn’t squander the advantage as they contrived several times in the past. They have yielded 428 and 345 already in the tournament. An ordeal beckoned, on a ground where Australia had ransacked 367/9. But Sri Lanka, the new unpredictables, put on a disciplined yet hostile show of bowling, bowling out the world champions for the lowest total on this ground. And at the heart of it was a man who calls himself the Gasman.