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Sri Lanka's Video Analyst

Delo12

Cricket Spectator
Sri Lanka's video analyst: Sanath Jayasundara


With well-trained and evidently educated hands, Sanath Jayasundara carefully dismantles the complex-looking device, which to the untrained eye seems just a high-end video camera attached to an adjustable monopod. Having connected the output chord of the camera to one of his laptops, he grabs a drink before massaging his shoulders.

Jayasundara is the Sri Lankan team’s video/performance analyst, the man the players come to with requests—from watching videos of their own performances to those of their opponents from around the world—and on Friday, a day before Sri Lanka’s quarterfinal match against England, the requests have been coming in fast. Jayasundara has just about gulped down half his drink when coach Trevor Bayliss summons him back into the pavilion.

By then, the videos he had shot of each batsman and bowler in the Sri Lankan team as they went through their practice routines in the morning at the R Premadasa Stadium in Colombo have been uploaded onto his laptop. Over the next few hours, starting with Bayliss, Jayasundara will be the most sought-after man in the Sri Lankan camp, as one by one, the 15 members of the squad will descend upon his working area asking to look at their performance videos.

“Sanga (skipper Kumar Sangakkara) bothers me the most,” he says. “Most of the boys are very keen when it comes to analysing their games, but Kumar spends the most time in front of my laptop.”

Though not quite as flashy as some of the others he shares the dressing-room with—Lankan players Lasith Malinga and Tillakaratne Dilshan—Jayasundara’s sizable locks are subjected to constant and fashionable makeovers. Having travelled the cricketing world along with the Sri Lankan team for a decade now, Jayasundara can be pardoned both for the slight mix of accents that surface in his speech and the way he constantly sprinkles the Australian ‘mate’ in his sentences.

On the face of it, Jayasundara’s is a highly enviable job. Not only does he have the vantage point in the entire stadium—the dressing-room—he also gets to mingle with the cricketers. But Jayasundara will tell you it’s no cushy vocation. It requires immense concentration, along with considerable knowledge of intricacies of the game. More often than not, he is the first to start his day and the last to wind up. And he is easily the busiest man in the camp, setting up cameras at the practice grounds or sitting in meetings with batsmen and bowlers.

“During a match, I am with peering into my laptop from the first ball to the last. I am often oblivious to the atmosphere around me as I have to capture every delivery in detail. My work continues even after the match is over and I get to celebrate a win only much later in the night,” he says.

It’s not just the videos of the Lankans’ practice sessions that are in demand in the dressing-room, sometimes players ask for videos of players from around the world.

“For example, I have to be ready with a video if Mahela (Jayawardene) asks for a Shaun Tait spell from 2007 or when Sanga wants to view one of Harbhajan’s latest variations. We have an extremely large database,” he explains.

While admitting to have become adept at understanding and deciphering various techniques of bowlers and batsmen, Jayasundara says he simply sticks to passing on the information he has gathered rather than approaching the players with his suggestions.

“The Sri Lankan cricket board has outsourced the job of capturing videos of every single match not involving the national team, including ‘A’ tours, under-19 tours and domestic matches and even those from around the world which get televised here. They provide us with the exact video that we seek,” he explains.

Jayasundara was a fresh graduate, having just completed his diploma in computer analysis, when he was roped in by the cricket board over a decade ago. Ask him whether he was always interested in cricket and Jayasundara looks astonished. “Of course, how can you not be? I have been in love with cricket from the start,” he says.

He remembers walking into the dressing room the day he joined the team—the day of an ODI against England at Dambulla in the 2000-01 season—and says he was as nervous as a young cricketer would have been. “I couldn’t believe I was in the midst of such legends who had done our country so proud over the years,” he recalls.

Jayasundara says CKM Dhananjay, his counterpart from India, is a “very close friend” and in fact, his counterparts from around the world have formed a fraternity of sorts. “There is intense sharing of knowledge. But we obviously cannot share too much information. Not even if we were in desperate need to check out an unknown youngster’s performance in Indian domestic cricket,” he says.

As the afternoon sun beats down on Premadasa Stadium, some of the Sri Lankan players prepare for their cool-down routines at one of the few shady parts of the ground, while the others collapse on the massage tables after the rigours of the morning session. With the coach on one side and skipper Sangakkara on the other, Jayasundara’s busiest part of the day is just beginning.

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