For the first time Sri Lankan cricket followers will be glued to television sets watching the Champions Trophy this month in Pakistan and the UAE minus their team which failed to qualify for what has come to be known as a second World Cup.
Sri Lanka was honoured to have played in the eight previous Champions Trophy tournaments, the first of which was played in Bangladesh in 1998, and thanks to the egoism and shortsightedness the team ended in the ninth place at the 10-nation 50-over World Cup in 2023 throwing the team out of this month’s eight-nation event.
Overall Sri Lanka failed to qualify for even a semi final berth in as many as nine major ICC tournaments in 10 years that includes three 50-over World Cups, four T20 World Cups, one Champions Trophy and also failed to qualify for two previous World Test Championship finals.
Sri Lanka also failed to qualify for the final of the 2025 World Test Championship.
In contrast the politically unstable and world despised Afghanistan qualified for the semi finals of the T20 World Cup in 2024 within the 10-year period Sri Lanka merely made up the number of participating teams at the world events.
Sri Lanka is also probably the only country in the world that keeps on bragging about a solitary 50-over World Cup win that took place in 1996 by organizing commemorative ceremonies while other countries put back the past and look ahead for more World Cups at any given sport.
Currently Sri Lanka is in danger of plummeting further down in the Test rankings with the team crashing to its worst defeat ever against Australia at the Galle International Cricket Stadium yesterday.
Sri Lanka has won more Test matches in Galle than anywhere else in the world that puts the figure at 27 wins from 47 matches played at the venue which is frowned upon by visiting rival teams as a batsman’s minefield given its spin-friendly nature from the first day of a match.
Pakistan and New Zealand herald the start of the 2025 Champions Trophy in Karachi on February 19 and the rest of the teams contesting are Bangladesh, India, South Africa, England, Australia and Afghanistan.
