Onus on Mathews and his men
One day they are on top of the world and the next they are at rock bottom. Sri Lanka is leading the five-match One Day International series 2-1 heading into fourth ODI against South Africa, to be played at Pallekele International Cricket Stadium today. But the same team, who scored a mammoth 320 in the first ODI at the R Premadasa International Stadium, was shot out for a paltry 167 at Pallekele on Friday.
On a slow strip, where the ball didn’t come on to the bat as expected, South Africa’s quickies claimed eight Sri Lankan wickets while left-arm spinner, Robin Peterson was belted for 35 runs in his seventh over. In contrast, Ajantha Mendis claimed 3 for 35 in his 10 overs, on the same strip, in the Proteas innings.
According to the Lankan skipper, Sri Lanka doesn’t need to hit the panic button yet.
Sri Lanka will be keen to win today’s match at Pallekele, and approach the Colombo game pressure-free. Pic by Shantha Ratnayake
“We’re still on top and we need to play good cricket to win against South Africa,” Angelo Mathews told reporters at the post-match press conference in Pallekele.
“It’s true that we won the first couple of games convincingly but we knew that they were going to comeback very hard at us.
“Today, they showed what they can do. So we have to be ready for the next game,” said Mathews, who took over the captaincy from his deputy Dinesh Chandimal, who put his team in pole position during the two previous games.
South Africa has never won an ODI series in Sri Lanka since cricketing ties between the two countries were formed in 1993.
The South Africans have so far won only two games out of 14. Friday’s win at Pallekele, was their first after 11 straight defeats on Sri Lankan soil.
Skipper Mathews has an idea where he and his team went wrong on Friday. “We didn’t bat according to the wicket I think,” he said.
“It was playing a bit slow and it was a bit uneven. And also it was taking a bit of turn. So we had to adjust ourselves to the wicket initially but we kept losing wickets,” Mathews lamented.
Sri Lanka gave away too many wickets when the ball was new and it was very difficult for them to recover from that initial setback.
Even Thisara Perera’s onslaught against Robin Petersen couldn’t make much of a difference. Perera’s 35 runs off the left-arm spinner pushed him into the second slot on the list of batsmen who have hit the most number of runs in an over during a One Day International.
South African Herschelle Gibbs hit a world record six sixes off Dutch bowler D. van Bunge during a 2007 World Cup match.
On Friday, Perera hit five sixes and a boundary off Petersen and with a wide being bowled, 35 runs were conceded in the over. Perera’s run deluge in the seventh over bowled by Peterson appeared in the following sequence: 6, (a wide), 6, 6, 6, 4 and 6.
“It looked like he was batting on a different strip.”
“We knew the wicket was getting slower and slower at the end. So we needed to try and rotate the strike. If there was another top-order batsman with Thisara Perera, it would have been different but unfortunately we had lost too many wickets by then,” said Mathews.
The good news is that Ajantha Mendis is back with a vengeance. He was out to prove a point and he did it in style at Pallekele, one of his favourite grounds.
“He was not at his best… But I saw he was bowling well in the latter part of his spell and we need to give him some confidence to get the maximum out of him,” said his skipper. Mendis too has to prove his consistency as a bowler in the One Dayers.
The mystery spinner tends to lose his way after a good performance. Despite being the fastest Sri Lankan to reach 100 ODI wickets, in 63 matches, his last three-wicket haul was seen exactly two years ago, against Australia.
Opener T.M. Dilshan is going through an indifferent spell. He has not come into his own in this series so far. Dilshan should be greasing all cylinders to fire at the next given opportunity. If he strikes, Sri Lanka should win the series comfortably.
However, the South Africans should not be written off. David Miller’s swashbuckling knock has given loads of confidence to his captain, A. B. De Villiers.
“David played out of his skin to his socks. We’ve always known he has had that ability, on any kind of wicket, to turn the game around and it’s nice to see that coming through now,” De Villiers said.
The South African skipper is in a buoyant mood after defending a low score. He was superbly backed by his bowlers and fielders.
“Going forward we’ll take a lot of confidence out of defending a lowish total. Maybe a couple of partnerships with bat in hand, we can get better,” De Villiers added.
At the inception, Lankan cricket fans were a dejected lot. Sri Lanka kept losing at the crucial times after doing lot of hard work during the initial stages.
Cricket fans were spot on. Sri Lanka lost two back-to=back World Cup finals. Sri Lanka lost to India in the Champion’s Trophy semi-final before losing to the same opponents in the Celkon Cup Tri-series final in the West Indies.
Here again, Mathews and his men face a similar scenario in case they fail to pull off a win today.
A South African win today may put Mathews and his team under more pressure and the final ODI at the RPIS will be a hot one.
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