Dhananjaya de Silva said that he missed his late dad Ranjan de Silva very much after winning his first Man of the Match award in the one-off T20 International against South Africa at the R Premadasa Stadium on Tuesday.
De Silva’s all-round contribution saw Sri Lanka pull of an exciting three-wicket win chasing 99 for victory.
“My father used to watch almost every match. I am really sad but I believe, he might be looking at me at some point,” said De Silva who lost his father, a Dehiwela-Mt Lavinia municipal councillor who was killed by unidentified gunmen in March this year.
De Silva won the Man of the Match award capturing the key wickets of Hashim Amla and JP Duminy and playing an important innings of 31 during Sri Lanka’s run chase putting together a partnership of 53 with Dinesh Chandimal after they had lost two wickets for six runs in the opening over.
He batted with so much ease having lots of time to play his shots against the likes of Kagiso Rabada and Lungi Ngidi.
“It's totally due to our practices. We know that their bowling attack was more challenging so we challenged accordingly and some time on the granite and that helped a lot in facing them,” De Silva said.
De Silva does not have a permanent slot in the one-day side (ODI & T20I) being shifted from opening the innings to batting as low as number nine.
“I like to bat at a designated position because I was batting in the top four since my school days but when it comes to playing in the national team, I'll have to take it up as it comes.”
“Also it mostly depends on the situation. But, usually, before the series, I am informed about the place where I am going to bat. So it’s upto me to adjust and bat according to the team requirement. Some people see it difficult and even for me it’s difficult at times but by now, I'm used to it,” he said.
OUR EXECUTION WAS WRONG – DUMINY
South Africa’s T20I captain Jean-Paul Duminy admitted that their execution was wrong and that led to their defeat.
“If you look at all of the first four games, our approach was one of positive shot selection as a team. Most of the guys were playing sweeps and reverse sweeps but the interesting thing was that we executed,” said Duminy.
“When you don’t execute like on a day today, it’s always going to look like: ‘What happened?’ It looked frantic. But in the bigger scheme of things, I’m not disappointed. We had a game plan, but unfortunately it didn’t work. There are lessons to be learnt no doubt. All in all I’m happy about the options that we took. We just didn’t execute.”
Duminy said that to defend a total as small as 98 they had to capture wickets and they came quite close to achieving that.
“I go back five years, I think we scored 115 here and defended it in a T20 game. In the back of my mind, I always knew there was a fighting chance. Sri Lanka had everything to lose at that stage in time, at the halfway period. They were expected to win the game,” said Duminy.
“All we could focus on was trying to take wickets. That was the only way we were going to win the game - try and take 10 wickets within 15 overs. That was always the angle. We got close in the end.
“I said to the guys: ‘If we can walk off the field knowing that we gave it our level best and tried to attack as best we could, and tried to take wickets every single ball, then we can walk off with our heads held high. We didn’t know we didn’t bat well enough. 30-40 runs was probably the difference between us winning the game and losing. Still a lot of positives to take away,” he said.
Although his team lost Duminy said that he was not disappointed with the result.
“We would like to have walked away with some success here in the last game. But for me the success is not the win or the loss. It’s a building period for us in terms of the World Cup. Even though it’s a T20 game we’re trying to develop something within our squad - a different mindset and a different approach,” said Duminy.
“There’s going to be times when you’re going to get it wrong. Today, unfortunately, we got it wrong. Our execution wasn’t there. For me the mindset was good. We were in a positive frame of mind, looking to take the game on. If we go in with that kind of mindset and try to execute, more times than not we’re going to give ourselves the best chance going into a World Cup next year,” he said.
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