Letting go is hard, especially when what you are letting go of is the best you've ever had.
Defeats like Sunday's just didn't happen to New Zealand's men's Test team over the past 10 years. Since 2014, there have been two innings losses, both significantly less-heavy than this Galle loss. The first was against Australia in Brendon McCullum's farewell series in 2016, which ok, qualifies as a horror-Test. (One of the great regrets of the great New Zealand years, is that they never got a Test series win over the opposition they love to beat most). But the other innings loss was against Pakistan in Dubai in a 2018 series New Zealand ended up winning 2-1.
And yet, as if checking off a bingo card of Test misery, New Zealand have in their last match managed to:
Lose by an innings and 154 in a series they lost 2-0.
Take no more than five wickets in a Test in which they lost 20.
Bowl so many overs in one innings that they faced the indignity of having the third new ball available.
Have their bowlers become such fodder, that a segment of the match (the overs after tea on day 2) were little more than an opposition milestone-getting exercise.
Be shot out for a two-digit score in the first innings.
All this, for a side that not only has a World Test Championship title in 2021, but who very arguably were the most consistently competent team over the past decade. Since 2014, New Zealand have collapsed for less than 150 only seven times in 147 innings - that percentage of 4.76 is the lowest for any Test side. And in 160 bowling innings, they'd never conceded 600, which every other WTC team had, at least once. That is until this Test, in which they were both all out for 88, and conceded 602 for 5.You tot all this up, peer down XI at the ages of many of the players in this team, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that there is, now, a bookend to something spectacular. One bad series doesn't make New Zealand a bad team, of course. But they are on four Test losses in succession, now, having also gone down 2-0 to Australia earlier in the year.
What have they got coming up? Oh. Three Tests in India? So, basically the most difficult assignment in cricket? Since 2014, only England and Australia have ever defeated India at home. Even then, we're talking about lone Test wins in series India have generally dominated.
You wonder if this New Zealand team are that heroic character about to meet their end after years of triumph. Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi facing down Darth Vader in the Death Star. Famed warrior Boromir falling from many arrow wounds while cutting down dozens of orcs. Augustus Gloop getting sucked into the Wonka factory pipe while guzzling chocolate from the river.
And you wonder most about one of New Zealand's finest heroes. Tim Southee, the second-greatest wicket-taker his country has ever seen, leads this team. Since the start of 2022, he averages 38.86, across 21 matches - a fifth of his playing career.
Follow this strain of reasoning, and you begin to stray into the truly uncomfortable. Is Southee's captaincy shoring up his place in the team? Matt Henry averages 23.56 since the start of 2022, even if this record is largely down to dominance at home. Is he more likely to be threatening than Southee in India, though? We are into walking-on-eggshells territory for everyone, including, you suspect, for New Zealand's selectors. Do they grit their teeth and hope Southee comes right? He does average 28.70 in India, which is excellent for a visiting quick. But is this Southee, still that Southee?
Some sentiment may come into the decisions to be made over the next weeks and months, and that is as it should be. Emotion is part of what draws us all into international cricket; as with any sport, its only intrinsic value is to the people playing it. And yet it feels as if the questions now facing New Zealand are not those of a thriving Test side, but one that must focus intensively on regeneration. If the India tour goes as most India tours tend to do, all this may only feel more vital.
There are shoots of growth already there, though. On two dusty Galle tracks, Will O'Rourke was the standout seamer, his average of 23.12 the best for any quick in the series, as he frequently troubled Sri Lanka's batters with menacing bounce at speeds of close to 140kph. Rachin Ravindra was New Zealand's highest scorer in the series, his 92 in the second innings of the first Test a knock that suggested he should be locked in at No. 4 for the foreseeable future.
Glenn Phillips has been around for a while, but has on this tour been a threatening offspin bowler in addition to making a mark with the bat - truly a choose-your-own-adventure cricketer in the same realm TM Dilshan (also an occasional wicketkeeper, and gun fielder) had lived in, in a previous era. Ben Sears, one of their fastest bowlers, could do with another outing.
In general, this feels like a team that will increasingly feel the pressure to usher in fresh ideas, fresh faces, and strategies at cricket's newest cutting edge, which they no longer seem to be at, though it wasn't that long ago that they were transforming the sport's whole landscape.
But things change. The world moves on.
When you've had it as good as New Zealand have had it for so long, letting go is hard.