GALLE, SUNDAY – New Zealand captain Kane Williamson said that his team could take a few lessons from Sri Lanka on how they played over the five days in the first Test at Galle after his team was beaten by six wickets.
“We’re up against a strong Sri Lankan side who know these conditions very well. They’re very clinical at playing the sort of cricket that’s required here. We can take some lessons from the way they played as well. They were very good across the five days,” said Williamson.
“It was fairly evenly poised for a long part of the match. But they were exceptional in their last innings. It’s important that we move on, and learn from some parts that we need to be better on.”
Assessing where his team went wrong in the Test Williamson said, “I think there were a lot of good bits. Perhaps we weren’t quite good enough for long enough. There were stages whether it was with the bat or with the ball, in the first innings where we were looking to get a little bit further ahead of the game.
I think it was 150 for 3 at one point, and at one stage there was a large partnership with Lakmal towards the end of that innings.
“There are two parts that we’d reflect on. It would have been nice if we were a little bit more clinical, but in these conditions, as we know, things can happen quickly and the match situation can change as well. For us it’s not looking too deep, but trying to learn from the errors going into the next match.
“I thought the bowling was outstanding yesterday. Perhaps we didn’t have a lot go our way, and maybe the odd chance we let slip.
We knew that on that sort of surface if you are able to get a breakthrough things can happen quickly, as we saw later on today when perhaps the game was already lost. It was a shame not to get early breakthroughs. It’s been a long time between red-ball cricket matches, and we need to have that mindset to take a game deeper than we did. That was the battle,” Williamson said.
The New Zealand skipper also expressed surprise the way the Galle pitch behaved.
“Having 260-odd going into the last innings, we thought the wicket would deteriorate more than it did. It perhaps got slower. It wasn’t turning a huge amount out of the rough. It didn’t get more difficult to bat on. Still, I think in a last innings chase, a lot of credit goes to the way Sri Lanka batted. It was a fantastic hundred by Dimuth.” – ST
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