West Indies and Sri Lanka have long had an affinity of sorts for each other - particularly the latter during its cricketing infancy, when the mighty West Indian juggernaut was for most fans their second team. It also helped that they were fellow island nations - or in the case of the West Indies, a nation of islands. And in the lead up to West Indies' first white-ball tour of Sri Lanka since 2020, these parallels have only grown stronger.
Underwhelming World Cups? Check. Novice head coaches? Check. A strong desire to rediscover the glories of old? You bet. They even both missed out on qualifying for the 2025 Champions Trophy and toured England over the summer.
They both also enter this series on the back of some promising white-ball results. West Indies have clean swept both South Africa and India at home in T20Is in 2024, while Sri Lanka have a home ODI series win against India as well as white-ball series wins against Zimbabwe and Afghanistan.
But what makes this upcoming tour so enticing is that, these are two sides which are pretty evenly matched. The last time West Indies toured Sri Lanka for a white-ball series, they swept the T20Is and were swept in the ODIs, and in 15 T20Is between the two, West Indies have won seven and Sri Lanka eight. Here we look at some of the key talking points surrounding the upcoming series.
A tale of two coaches
Sticking to theme of parallels, there's no better point to begin with than Daren Sammy and Sanath Jayasuriya. Jayasuriya's had a fairly impressive start to his career as head coach, but if ever there were questions over how his man-management- centric approach to coaching could translate over a longer period, perhaps Sammy holds the answers.
While Sammy's franchise coaching background brought with it more experience when taking over the reins as West Indies head coach in March 2023, the similarities in his approach to Jayasuriya's is hard to miss.
Sammy has spoken about honesty and clarity being key pillars in his coaching style; for Jayasuriya, it's instilling confidence and gaining the trust of the players. These could be seen as two sides of the same motivational coin, as both rely on solid foundations of rapport with players and administrators alike to push forward their plans.
And a quick look at West Indies T20I record since Sammy took over speaks volumes towards his impact - six combined bilateral series against South Africa, India, England and Australia has yielded five series wins. The only blips were a 2-1 series defeat in Australia and an unsuccessful World Cup campaign, which still saw them come out with five wins and two defeats.
This run of results has seen the West Indies surge up the ICC T20I rankings, up from seventh to third. With Sri Lanka languishing currently in eighth place in those same rankings, Jayasuriya will no doubt be eyeing similar upward momentum.
West Indies vs spin
One area in which the West Indies have improved drastically during Sammy's tenure has been in their approach to spin bowling. From once being a primarily six-hitting side that could be efficiently countered by simply cutting off boundaries, there is now a growing focus on running between the wickets while data analytics increasingly informs their strategies - such as maintaining right-left combinations to better deal with legspin, and drafting in strong batters against spin such as Shai Hope.
"The improvement in our run rate against spin from five-point something to six and a half to eight runs an over between the seventh to 15th overs…we were the best team in the last five overs in the last year," Sammy said in an interview with The Cricket Monthly this past week.
But in Sri Lanka, they will likely come across their stiffest spin challenge yet, with the likes of Maheesh Theekshana, Wanindu Hasaranga, Jeffrey Vandersay and Dunith Wellalage offering a varied array of threats. Though in the limited sample size of T20Is in Dambulla, it has generally been the seamers that have proved more of a threat.
Battle of the quicks
While T20 cricket is known for its relentless onslaught of power-hitting, where T20 games - and series - are generally won is in the bowling. Even on the most placid of surfaces, a potent and varied attack - particularly when it comes to pace - can make all the difference.
The hosts boast two slingers - with differing trajectories, pace and skillsets - in Matheesha Pathirana and Nuwan Thushara, while Binura Fernando and his 6'4" frame offers less pace but makes up for it in guile and cunning, which makes him a threat both in the powerplay and at the death.
West Indies meanwhile boast talents such as Shamar Joseph and Alzarri Joseph - both clocking above 140kph regularly and capable of unsettling bounce - while Jayden Seales excelled for the Jaffna Kings in the 2021 Lanka Premier League.
Visiting pacers have also had a fair bit of success when touring Sri Lanka - in venues other than the Khettarama in Colombo, where spin dominates. In Afghanistan's three T20Is earlier this year in Dambulla, 13 of the 20 wickets they took in the series were by seamers, while even Zimbabwe's modest seam contingent accounted for eight scalps across three T20Is to go with the 13 they picked up in three ODIs.
How both sets of seamers profit from the conditions could go a fair way in deciding this series.
Eye on Dambulla
The Rangiri Dambulla Stadium has hosted just three men's T20Is - all in the past year - when Sri Lanka took on Afghanistan. There a 200-plus total was chased down once, while scores of 187 and 160 were defended successfully. If you include data from women's T20Is played there, Sri Lanka most recently chased down a target of 166 in the 2024 Asia Cup final, while the top four high scores from that tournament - all played in Dambulla - read: 201, 191, 184 and 178. Safe to say, the batters have found it quite enjoyable.
This is also down to Sri Lanka Cricket making a concerted effort to curate more batter friendly tracks so as to nurture more aggressive cricket from their batters. The only outlier in this new initiative was the recent ODI series against India at the Khettarama in Colombo, where surfaces were geared towards spin - this though has the caveat of Khettarama traditionally being on the slower side, while the series also immediately followed the LPL which meant the pitches were already fairly worn down.
Dambulla should not have any such issues, so the expectation is a surface tailor-made for some big-hitting T20 cricket.