Asia Cup defeat a wake-up call before the World Cup: Head Coach Silverwood

Sri Lanka Head Coach Chris Silverwood said that the humiliating ten-wicket defeat after being bowled out for 50 in the final of the Asia Cup against India would be a wake-up call for the team ahead of next month’s World Cup in India.

“Sometimes a little bit of kick in the rear end before going into big tournaments is not the worst. Maybe it is just a wake-up call before we compete against teams like India, Australia, New Zealand, those types of guys in the World Cup. We have to be on top of our game and play consistently all the time,” said Silverwood at the post-match press conference.

While praising the bowling of India, Silverwood said that Sri Lanka had played good cricket to reach the final of the Asia Cup.  

“It was a superb bowling performance. We came up against a very high-class bowling unit. Equally we didn’t help ourselves. It was disappointing to finish the way we did.”

“We can’t dwell too much because we have a big tournament coming up, the World Cup, there are lessons to learn, questions to answer in the dressing room.”

“We played some very good cricket to get to the final. For me it was an achievement in itself. Really to lose the way we did it was really disappointing for all the players and the coaching staff as well.”

“We have got to rebuild and bring the confidence back to the players. Give them a little bit of a break now and get back, fresh together and start to rebuild from where we left off,” Silverwood said.

Speaking of the positives that Sri Lanka took out of the Asia Cup, Silverwood said, “We have seen two youngsters put their hands up (Dunith) Wellalage and (Matheesha) Pathirana. Sadeera’s (Samarawickrama) played some good knocks, we’ve seen (Kusal) Mendis come back into form. There have been some good individual performances and team performances but consistency is the thing that we need to bring into our game. If we do that, we can go toe to toe with teams like India.” – (ST)