“Series took its toll” – Coach Graham Ford
Graham Ford
The turnaround between tours are so severe that Sri Lanka who left South African soil last night will play Australia in a three-match T20 series, in less than 96 hours after arriving Down Under.
The scheduling has been so intense that half of the T20 squad left straight to Australia from South Africa, with hardly any time to recover mentally and physically after facing South African hostilities over a two months period.
At the post match press conference Graham Ford—the Sri Lankan coach admitted that playing too much cricket without zero flush-out time in between series has taken a toll of the players, especially in smaller nations like Sri Lanka.
“Yes certainly. From a personal point of view, I think they do and I feel that it’s tough for smaller cricket playing nations like us. We don’t have the depth perhaps, England, Australia and India has,” said Ford at the post match press conference.
Sri Lanka will have just four days to acclimatize to the Australian conditions before next Friday’s opening T20 fixture in Melbourne with the second and third scheduled for 19 and 22 in Geelong and Adelaide.
“So same guys have to step up to the plate for all formats pretty often and if you going to play cricket all over the year, you will have problems,” he said. For an instance Angelo (Mathews) has broken down a couple of time. He is one of those guys who has to play in all formats. So it takes its toll on players and I believe it’s even tougher for the smaller countries.
Mathews suffered a recurrent of his hamstring injury during the second T20 and returned home almost immediately and was later ruled out of the Australian tour with doctors recommending at least four weeks of recovery period.
Soon after returning from Australia, Sri Lanka will host Bangladesh in a bi-lateral series, their final series before June’s Champions Trophy in England. The tour is not part of the bilateral agreements but Bangladesh accepted Sri Lanka’s request for a home series fill a scheduling void.
Ford also admitted that fatigue has taken a huge tall on the players, a major reason for drop catches and poor fielding.
“I don’t think it’s the lack of commitment but there had been few mistakes in the last two games and I think fatigue has taken a toll,” Ford explained. Sri Lanka dropped as many as three catches, including that of Hashim Amla—who made sparkling 154 to help South Africa’s course for a massive total.
“It has been a long haul for some of these players. Some of the bodies are all over the time. I am not trying to make any excuses. There was couple of games in 50 over competition where I thought the guys fielded exceptionally well.”