Bitterly disappointing to get knocked out of WC
Having come to Australia for the T20 World Cup giving our fans so much hope, it was bitterly disappointing to see the team bowing out without putting up a proper fight. In this campaign, we have beaten four teams – Ireland, Afghanistan, UAE and Netherlands. We lost our away against stronger teams like Australia, England and New Zealand despite being in stronger positions.We were soundly beaten by even a team like Namibia, for the first time in our history. That defeat took confidence away from us at the very outset of the tournament.
The team fought well defending 142 against England in Sydney on Saturday although our chances of qualifying for the semis were already gone. I thought we were about 15 to 20 runs short and England didn’t take too many risks chasing down the target. Had we scored few more runs, capitalising on the great start we got, we could have finished the tournament on a high. But batting let us down. Apart from Pathum Nissanka the rest of the batting crumbled under pressure, giving England a below par total to chase.
Some teams had even two games washed out and had points shared. But none of that happened to us and our fate was in our hands. There were question marks on our selection with team lacking another fast bowling all-rounder with the squad. Picking Jeffrey Vandersay to play in Australia when you have a champion leggie like Wanindu Hasaranga, is questionable.
We would have been better off with another fast bowling all-rounder. We needed such type of bowler to replace Chamika Karunaratne in the playing XI.
Sri Lanka need genuine all-rounders like Hardik Pandya, Ben Stokes, Marcus Stoinis, Shadab Khan and Mitchell Marsh to give that X-factor. This is an area that Sri Lanka Cricket should seriously look at, if they are to be a competitive team at the highest level. Yes, Sri Lanka beat teams like India and Pakistan on their way to win the Asia Cup but they need to do that more consistently to be successful.
Did Binura Fernando prove his fitness before he was flown in to Australia as the injury replacement to Dilshan Madushanka? Did he play enough domestic cricket before being drafted in? These were some of the questions many had raised.
I also felt Asitha Fernando, who was part of the Asia Cup winning squad should have been at least among the travelling reserves. Asitha was rushed in only after the fourth fast bowler broke down.
Least said about our fielding the better it is. During the Adelaide games on Friday, a chart was shown on television and while New Zealand are leading that chart when it comes to fielding, we are lingering bottom of the table. For a team that used to take a lot of pride in our fielding, the current standards are so below par. Dropping eight catches in the Super 12s finally proved costly for us.
I also feel the team needs more contributions from captain Dasun Shanaka as he managed just 78 runs in eight games and took just one wicket. I thought he should have done more with the ball. He is quite handy with the ball and the conditions suited him well.
Your captain has to lead from the front and when he has a bad tournament a lot of things go wrong. I hope he comes back to form in the all-important Afghanistan ODI series which we must win to ensure direct qualification for the 2023 ODI World Cup in India.