Sri Lankan cricketers bring rain, catatonia

Oh no!

As I was driving to the train station this morning I saw a big, black front approaching from the east that resembled the mothership from Independence Day. And from the west, giant CB clouds that look like the clouded mountain in The Amber Spyglass.

It’s going to rain! At least the clouded mountain mothership will provide me with shade.

Also, I read this a few days ago and thought it was interesting.

Sri Lankan Captain Mahela Jayawardene says his team has a great chance of victory in Perth on Friday because he believes Australian players have lost their self belief in close matches.

While I hope this isn't the case, and it goes without saying that he's trying to talk us down in hope it'll affect our performance, I think he might have a point.

The last couple of games you could see that the effort was consistent, we didn’t just lie down when the going got really tough. But that said, the self-belief is different. There have been games where the self-belief and the effort have coupled (with ability, of course) to enable the boys to pulls off monumental and impressive victories.

But is the effort without the confidence enough? The team has been criticised relentlessly in the last few weeks for being arrogant, a term that implies over-confidence. Maybe the critics have been successful in shreading the confidence away. And so there have been losses.

However, this isn’t to say that a) the quality of the opposition hasn’t been enough alone to defeat us, and b) we just didn’t play well enough.

Roll on 1330.