The Sri Lankan scramble

Bony elbows flapping, bad haircut flailing, Nuwan Pradeep goes flying to the crease like a hare flees from a hunter. He used to bowl a little more round-arm. "The new Lasith Malinga", or so the hype-stories went. But then his body broke down several times a season. Now he goes taller and straighter, scrawny arms whipping in the delivery stride, and somehow, through the vortex of limbs, scrambles deliveries faster than 140kph.

Scramble is what anyone who follows Sri Lankan cricket should be accustomed to. The team rarely looks that good. But in the likes of Kumar Sangakkara and Rangana Herath they have a trusty, ageing engine, so they patch together the rough-cut parts more recently manufactured by the domestic system, and call themselves a semi-decent cricket side.

Like so many 90s two-stroke three-wheelers on Colombo streets, though, Sri Lanka have been sputtering up hills on this tour, and coughing around the tight bends. On day one, they turned up at a ground nicknamed the world's largest roundabout (it does look a little bigger than the cricket ground at Galle, which is also a glorified roundabout), and raced around for a little over two sessions, before hitting some serious bumps towards day's end.

The scrambling had begun before play even began. In this squad, Sri Lanka had quicks who averaged 48, 49, 72 and 35 before the innings. So when one of the seamers is pushing for a place with good bowling in the nets, who do Sri Lanka leave out? Of course it's the man with the best record. If that sounds strange, try this: when New Zealand were shot out for 221 just after tea, that decision was largely justified.

Sri Lanka prides itself on its school cricket system, which many say was once the best in the world, but no one told the current Test bowlers, who scrambled together cricket careers in their early 20s. Pradeep himself was discovered in a soft-ball competition run by a TV station. Sri Lanka's chief destroyer began the day with a worse bowling average than Arjuna Ranatunga, gutted an in-form middle order, and still his numbers remained worse than Geoffrey Boycott's.

It's a puzzling old thing, is Sri Lankan cricket. Sometimes it's better not to inspect the improvised parts and pieces of twine holding everything together too closely. There is a chance you might upset something and bring it all crashing down. But then, there will probably be someone to pull it all back together again, because someone always does.

The seamers searched for swing early on, pitching up, inviting the drive, but when that failed on what was expected to be a seaming surface, they scrambled up a range of other plans, switching between these, seemingly on a whim. Suranga Lakmal, the leader of the attack, had three overs from the scoreboard end, then suddenly wheeled around to bowl against the wind, before he made the first incision. The ball was wide, and back of a length - not exactly making the batsman play. But he did play at it, and the edge was collected. Pradeep, who was taken off after two overs with the new ball, returned to the attack and drew a similar dismissal from Hamish Rutherford.

Ross Taylor's outside edge was beaten or collected repeatedly, before Pradeep jagged one back in and had him dragging on. Of all Sri Lanka's wickets, that one had the most method behind it. Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson played on too, when the ball did just enough to strike the inside edge, but when Sri Lanka said they had made plans for these batsmen before the match, it's unlikely that they envisioned balls well outside off would end up on the stumps. James Neesham ducked under torrent of balls at his face when he arrived - clearly another plan. In the end, it was a tame prod outside off that did for him.

This New Zealand team has a thin pool of cricketers to call upon too, but at least their domestic system is not a bad joke. They build. They review. They have periods of introspection following which tough calls are made, and new measures implemented, as Brendon McCullum revealed of the meetings that took place following a 45 all out in Cape Town in 2013. In comparison, Sri Lanka's top team appears to emerge out of chaos. They win at times, excel even, then tend to dip back into chaos again, as they did in the 25.4 overs they faced on Saturday.

Perhaps Sri Lanka should see day one's end as a missed opportunity. Kaushal Silva was unlucky, and Angelo Mathews got a great ball in a bad situation, but Lahiru Thirimanne and Dimuth Karunaratne fell to loose shots, and Prasanna Jayawardene could have done better with the ball that got him out, especially as there were only four more balls remaining till stumps. Hopes of a big first innings lead became a mission to avoid a hefty deficit.

A result is almost assured in Wellington now, weather permitting, and this lot will need to scramble a decent total on day two, if they are to end the series 1-1, and not 0-2.