DAMBULLA, Monday – Sri Lanka’s batting coach and acting head coach Thilan Samaraweera said that South Africa’s strength lay in their first 8-10 overs of pace which Sri Lanka failed to negotiate and contributed to a five-wicket defeat in the first ODI played at the Rangiri Dambulla Stadium on Sunday.
Sri Lanka winning the toss and batting first crashed to 36-5 by the ninth over and although they recovered somewhat to post a total of 193 it was insufficient to stop South Africa from overhauling it in the 32nd over and going one-up in the five-match series.
 Sri Lanka coach Thilan Samaraweera disappointed with the batting. |
“Honestly, I think, it's very poor batting because there was nothing was wrong with the pitch. The wicket looked dry. We lost wickets due to poor batting and poor execution. The first wicket fell to a full toss, but still we recovered well”.
“We got a partnership close to 100 runs. But in the first 10 overs, we were five down for 36 and it's very hard to win games from there,” said Samaraweera at the post match press conference.
“We’ve talked about the strengths of South Africa and its obvious their strength is in the first 8 to 10 overs. We had to get through that period and after that they have a very inexperienced bowling attack,” explained Samaraweera.
“But unfortunately they got five wickets. We were thinking of a total of 275 or 280 because we had three spinners to defend that total. But after scoring only 193, we had to attack and we had to get ten wickets to win.”
Samaraweera stated that it was the responsibility of the first four batters that if they remain at the wicket till the 30th over to go for a big innings.
The only bright spark of the Sri Lankan batting was the 95-run stand between Kusal Perera and Thisara Perera that saw them reach their final total which at one time didn’t seem possible.
It was not until the arrival of Thisara at the crease that the Lankan batting was able to put pressure back on the South African bowlers who until that time had been on top.
Thisara took the bowling by the scruff of its neck to bludgeon his way to 49 off 30 balls before being dismissed.
“The good thing is that after his dismissal, he showed a lot of disappointment in the dressing room. He felt that it was the best time for him to get a one-day hundred,” said Samaraweera.
“In the last six months, Thisara has improved a lot as a batsman. I gave a lot of space to him and he is getting there. We showed him how much he is important to us in the 2019 World Cup. We had a lot of discussions and disagreements as well. Not only me, a lot of credit should be given to Rumesh (Ratnayake) and Chandi (Hathurusingha) who gave him a lot of confidence.
“Rumesh changed his approach to the bowling crease. He was very slow in his bowling approach. We can see how fast he is in his bowling run up in the last seven months. He is in the right direction at the moment,” he said.
DAMBULLA WAS MORE OF A SOUTH AFRICAN TYPE WICKET - SHAMSI
Left-arm spinner Tabraiz Shamsi who won the man of the match award in the first ODI against Sri Lanka with four wickets for 33 described the Rangiri Dambulla Stadium pitch as one similar to that in South Africa.
“To be honest I felt it was more of a South African type wicket, there wasn’t much spin because you bowled first. We’ve bowled a lot on pitches like this back home. In these conditions on normal Sri Lankan pitches it does help a bit but this was more like a Pretoria or Wanderers wicket, wasn’t much spin,” said Shamsi.
Shamsi among whose victims included the two main run-getters for Sri Lanka Kusal Perera (81) and Thisara Perera (49) gave credit to his fast bowlers for making the job easy for him.
“Our fast bowlers were exceptional upfront Sri Lanka were 36-5. They ran in hard and did the damage earlier. I managed to get the guys that made runs because the fast bowlers made our job a lot easier. Any team that’s five down for 36 makes the job easier. Credit to the Sri Lankans to almost get to nearly 200 after a start like that,” said Shamsi.
“Everytime I play, I try and do my best. I’ve been given the freedom by the coach and captain to try and express myself. I am glad that I was able to produce it today (Sunday). Cricket is a funny game you can have a good day, sometimes things might go wrong. On another day my job maybe to contain and hold up one end it depends on what’s required of me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, that’s how the game goes,” he said.
The win was South Africa’s first on the tour after being white-washed 2-0 in the Test series and Shamsi said that it brought a lot of happiness into the change room.
“Ever since we landed in Sri Lanka the guys have worked extremely hard yesterday (Saturday) was not different”.
“We were told to have an easy session because we had a day game but the practice lasted till about 3 or 4 hours, that shows that the guys are really pumped up to try and do well,” said Shamsi.
“There was no lack of preparation from any side Sri Lanka is also a good team they love to win too. Some days you win, some days you lose. We just keep on doing our work behind the scenes nothing changes whether we win or not. We don’t take it easy.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment