Darren Stevens

This Sri Lanka side must be given a chance before they are written off, but it’s fair to say they don’t have the pedigree of the era when I was making my way as a cricketer nearly three decades ago. In 1998, my first full season as a pro, I played a tour match at Leicester against the Sri Lankans, who had won the World Cup in such style two years earlier. It’s worth listing the XI we faced in that match: Jayasuriya, Arnold, M Jayawardene, de Silva, Ranatunga (c), Tillakaratne, Hathurusingha, H Jayawardene (wk), Wickramasinghe, Perera, Muralitharan. What a line-up. And that’s...