You can see the allure, don’t you? Really, anyone can.
It makes no difference if you’re such a casual admirer that you’ve never heard
of him. Or, if you’re a particularly diligent coach, you’ve scrutinised
technique and combed through reams of data. Your chances of being drawn in are
equal.
Dunith Wellalage bowls hard, hits hard, runs fast, and
catches like a dream. He also plays hearty cricket. He is 20. All that is
needed right now is this.
One can not help but fall in love with a 20-year-old.
You are welcome to project your own aspirations for him onto the bare white
walls of his life. He is too new to have offended you and too inexperienced to
need to produce runs or wickets, and you know what, just too unsullied by
experience to be saddled with concepts such as consistency, and responsibility,
which so stultify adult life.
The fast-turning surface at Khettarama tested every
hitter who approached the plate and was ideal for Wellalage’s straightforward
left-arm spin. With his natural variation, he bowled at the stumps, letting
some balls continue with the arm and others turn.
Experienced bowlers could comment, “You just have
to put the ball on the right spot and let the pitch do the work” when
faced with such a surface. That’s accurate. But watching a rookie bowler place
the ball in the right place is always more entertaining. Senior players are
honoured for their experience. Cricketers that are younger are underdogs.
Unfazed by the situation, Wellalage at one point
started ripping the ball, altering his speeds and angles while largely sticking
to the decent length that was responsible for the majority of his wickets.
Because of who he is, the most crowded stadium in the competition joined him in
his sincere appeal.
Later, the Khettarama stands sang “Wella, Wella,
Wella” as he batted with Dhananjaya de Silva, who was applying pressure at
the other end when Wellalage took most of his wickets. This was possibly the
first occasion during the entire competition in Sri Lanka that a single
participant received such a loud cheer of encouragement.
On the same surface where he had before wreaked such
havoc, he was still unbeaten at 42 off 46 after hitting the only six of Sri
Lanka’s innings and seeming capable of taking on players like Kuldeep Yadav,
Ravindra Jadeja, and Axar Patel. He had a 5 for 40 from 10 overs statistic.
Kuldeep did a good job of bowling, recording 4 for 43, but the Nos. 10 and 11
were two of the wickets. Only Rohit, who scored more runs than Wellalage before
spin was introduced, has more runs.
In the end, Wellalage will give the specifics of his
own life and work. The room for our own projections will vanish soon. However,
while the rest of us have the opportunity to say it, this player appears to
have genuine promise, largely due to remarkable tenacity but also not
insignificant talent. It is not improbable that his name will continue to be
heard throughout the stadium long after he has started to feel the weight of
consistency or accountability.