It will be hard for Sangakkara's Sri Lanka to stay at the top

Now Muttiah Muralitharan has left the stage, can Sri Lanka seriously consider a return to the winners' circle any time soon?

While India started the party, Kumar Sangakkara, the beaten Sri Lanka captain, reflected that his own side had a "strange feeling of satisfaction" from what they achieved at the World Cup.
They are a relatively small island nation and were only trumped in the final by cricket's one great behemoth. It is something to be proud of, he reasoned, fairly.
But the bottom line is they were the bridesmaid again.
__________________

More on the World Cup

. Tip your hat to Anil Kumble for hand in India World Cup triumph
. After huge expectations, India's World Cup celebrations just as big
. Pakistan reaches out to India, but will we see a cricket tour soon?
. All Cricket World Cup coverage
__________________
They have now been runners-up in three of the last four major International Cricket Council (ICC) tournaments - the 2007 and 2011 World Cups, and the 2009 World Twenty20.
Now Muttiah Muralitharan has left the stage, can they seriously consider a return to the winners' circle any time soon?
Will their 1996 World Cup glory remain an albatross weighing on the players (much like 1983 had been for India before this weekend)?
The decisive factor will be how they handle the loss of Muralitharan. Often, sides become stronger when a dominant personality departs.
Take England, for example. Andrew Flintoff never enjoyed success on anywhere near the Muralitharan scale, but was still the most popular cricketer in his country.
When he finally gave in to injury, it left a substantial void.
However, the other players grew in the knowledge they would no longer have the ultimate impact cricketer there to help. Everyone had to lend a hand.
Now England - at Test and Twenty20 level, at least - are far stronger without him.
Whether the same will go for Sri Lanka seems unlikely.
Muralitharan's influence extends way beyond his extraordinary wickets return.
Chief among his many virtues is the example he sets for others.
Paul Farbrace, who was Sri Lanka's assistant coach until recently, recounts a story of when he upset the spinner by suggesting he had conceded too many singles through square-leg in a one-day international in Dambulla. Muralitharan told him where he could stick his advice, then the following morning Farbrace got a call.
"I was in bed in my hotel room in Colombo," Farbrace said. "He called at 8am and said: 'Where are you?' I told him I was laying in bed, and he said: 'Come, meet me at 9am at Sinhalese Sports Club'.
"He bowled for an hour and a half, practising hitting the outside of the off stump.
"That was a bloke who had 700 Test wickets, a phenomenal record, but he just wanted to learn and get better."
The message that conveys to his colleagues is, you do not become a great without doing the hard yards.
The loss of Muralitharan will be huge, but there is reason for optimism. This is not the first time they have faced a problem like this.
Succession planning is a strong point for Sri Lankan cricket.
In the post-1996 era, the national team has been dominated by a coterie of senior players known as the Big Five.
Despite the influence each of those players had, the pool shrunk to three a long while in advance of this World Cup.
Sanath Jayasuriya and Chaminda Vaas could both feasibly have stretched their careers out and influenced Sri Lanka's World Cup campaign for the good.
However, each was moved aside some time ago as Sri Lanka Cricket built for the future beyond the short-term goal of the World Cup.
The strategy was bold.
They wanted to ward off the type of decline currently being felt in Australia by replacing each great at timely intervals, rather than en masse, thus giving a successor time to bed in.
Of the Big Five, only Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene remain. They were the only two of the five who do not have a World Cup winners medal.
Now much rests on them if Sri Lanka are ever to reach those heights again.
[e-mail]