Asia Cup 2022: Sri Lanka's usage of cryptic messages from the dressing room baffles broadcasters and fans alike

Sri Lanka- Source (Twitter)

Cricket is a game that is constantly innovating itself and the horizons of the game are being breached to give rise to new and better innovations to take the game forward. One such innovation was used in the must-win clash between Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Sri Lanka called the coin right and decided to field first in the do-or-die clash. The winner of the match would get through to the Super 4 stage of the multilateral tournament. During the Bangladesh batting innings, Sri Lanka's team analyst, along with Head Coach Chris Silverwood, was seen displaying messages in the form of coded signals by using clipboards. The codes read “2D” and “D5”.

The broadcasters thought that it could be a tactical message that the coach was trying to deliver to the Sri Lankan skipper when he was shuffling the bowlers. Truth be told, this is not the first time that the former English coach has used such tactics. He adopted similar tactics to communicate with England players when he was the head coach of England in a series against South Africa in 2020.

Former England captain Michael Vaughan had come down heavily on Silverwood, who used to communicate to the then England skipper Eoin Morgan via cryptic messages from the dressing room. Morgan had defended the use of the tactic from Chris Silverwood at that time stating that it was well within the rules and there was no issue with this. He stated that they wanted to use the data from the players.

"100 per cent, (it's) within the spirit of the game. There's nothing untoward about it. It's about maximizing the information that we're taking in, and measuring it against things (like) coaches' recommendations, the data, what's going on," Morgan said.

Meanwhile, The Sri Lankans emerged victorious by getting the better of Bangladesh in an edge of the seat thriller. Sri Lanka chased down the 183-run target in the second ball of the 19th over off a no ball and the game ended in an anticlimax.