ABU DHABI, Monday: Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews was at a loss for words to describe his team’s two batting collapses in back to back games that led to their exit from the ongoing Asia Cup cricket tournament in the UAE.
“To be honest I don’t have any answers. It was very disappointing where our batting was the main reason on both occasions. We are a much better team than this, this was a shocking performance,” said a disappointed Sri Lankan skipper after his team’s 90-run defeat at the hands of Afghanistan.
“Bangladesh you can’t take them lightly they’ve played the same guys for almost 10 years. The Afghans have played really good cricket over the past one and half years. It’s embarrassing but it’s not an embarrassment to lose to Bangladesh and Afghanistan who played better cricket than us. But it’s shocking the way we batted in both matches,” he said.
Sri Lanka were put out for totals of 124 and 158 in the two matches.
“We haven’t done that badly the tri-series in Bangladesh we won that, but yes we lost the series to South Africa and the Nidahas trophy. We admit our limited-over performances haven’t been upto the mark,” admitted Mathews. “We need to find solutions because we are only months away from the World Cup. Losing like this is extremely embarrassing to me and the entire team, we’ve let the whole nation down.”
Mathews said the batting debacles had nothing to do with talent but with handling pressure in the middle during situations.
“We all have shown what we are capable of in the last series against South Africa. It’s just that pressure handling and the situation handling wasn’t good on both occasions. We cracked under pressure. That is just purely mental. We need to find a solution, we just can’t move on like this,” said Mathews.
“Handling pressure is something the coach can’t do anything about. The players will have to learn how to handle pressure and on this occasion we were extremely poor. Credit to the Bangladeshis and Afghans they squeezed us and never let us off the hook,” he said.
Commenting on the fielding Mathews said, “We were slightly better than the last occasion, our ground fielding and catching was okay today. The bowlers and the fielders did their part to restrict the opponent to 249 which on these wickets are very much gettable. I would put the blame purely on the batting unit. We all take responsibility and it was just deplorable and shocking to all of us.”
“We need a big turnaround for in a couple of week’s time we will be playing England and its going to be a tough series once again. This kind of performance is unacceptable,” Mathews said.
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