At this level you can’t be missing straight balls – coach Pothas

NAGPUR, Friday – Interim head coach Nic Pothas tried his best to explain the poor batting display put up by his team on the first day of the second Test against India here on Friday stating that at Test level you cannot be missing straight balls.

“The wicket has got no demons. It hasn’t spun, it hasn’t seamed. There were six straight ball dismissals and at international level it’s no surprise. Ashwin and Jadeja got wickets bowling stump to stump. At this level you can’t be missing straight balls,” said Pothas at the end of the day.

Sri Lanka winning the toss and batting first were dismissed for a disappointing 205 with many of the wickets falling to poor shot selection against some accurate and testing bowling by the Indians.

“The wicket has not done anything. All what it has done is to skid on a bit. The first day of a Test match when you are ‘done’ on a wicket that has not done much losing seven wickets to spin it is disappointing. The change room and the guys have set themselves high standards. They are going to be disappointed. In any process you are going to have those disappointments,” Pothas said.

Commenting on the shots played by skipper Dinesh Chandimal and Niroshan Dickwella, Pothas said, “The captain made a decision at that time, we empower the batsmen to make decisions at the middle. He obviously felt that was the way to score runs at that point, but it didn’t come off. I probably say that maybe the timing of that shot was perhaps not at its best. He is playing well and he is confident and we back our batsmen to be positive. You can’t be there forever and block it.

“On hindsight that’s what the numbers tell you that Dickwella’s dismissal sparked off a collapse. We let ourselves down from that point onwards. You can’t say that Niroshan Dickwella gets out and the rest can get out. Dick is a positive batter and that’s a shot he plays well. I don’t want to stop him being himself. I want people to bat the way they bat.

He is a kind of player who transfers pressure back to the bowlers. Certainly, not going to say that because Dick got out, the others got out.”

Pothas denied that being asked to practice on a matting pitch had anything to do with the poor batting display.

“That was provided for us. So we were asked not to take that off the wicket. We are solution based, so we adapted our training on the facility we were given.”