W. Indies look to Sobers presence for inspiration in Sri Lanka

Sport360 staff 08:21 22/10/2015
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  • Cricketing royalty: Gary Sobers.

    The West Indies will look to legend Garfield Sobers for inspiration as they bid for an unlikely series-saving victory when they take on fellow strugglers Sri Lanka in the second Test in Colombo beginning on Thursday.

    The tourists have yet to win a Test in Sri Lanka after 10 attempts and they suffered an innings defeat last weekend in the first Test in Galle where veteran spinner Rangana Herath took 10 wickets.

    The 79-year-old Sobers, widely regarded as the greatest allrounder ever to have played the game, is in Colombo to watch the second and final Test at the P Sara Oval alongside Sri Lanka’s Michael Tissera.

    The two men were rival captains when the then Ceylon played the West Indies in an unofficial one-off Test at the same venue in 1967.

    Sobers was the star of the show, hitting a century in a rain-affected match. Back then, the West Indies were on the cusp of a lengthy period of domination in international cricket while their hosts were still years away from attaining Test status.

    The West Indies however have not found Sri Lanka a happy hunting ground since they played their first official Test on the island in 1993.

    Now the West Indies are only above Bangladesh in the league table of regular Test playing nations while Sri Lanka are one notch above them in seventh place.

    Sri Lanka are going through a rebuilding phase after the recent retirements of star batsmen Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene. But they were still far too strong for the visitors in Galle who were let down by sloppy fielding as well as a failure by most of their batsmen to build a big innings.

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