Assistant coach Nawaz laments Sri Lanka’s poor fielding

Sri Lanka assistant coach Naveed Nawaz lamented Sri Lanka’s poor catching that allowed Pakistan off the hook and put them in a good position to win the first Test played at Galle. 

“We basically dropped too many catches and if we had held onto them, we should have got Pakistan out for less than 300,” said Nawaz at the end of the day. “In our second innings Pakistan held onto a couple of half chances which made an impact. Fielding is always crucial. The standard of fielding that we have displayed has been disappointing in this game.” 

Nawaz also said that Sri Lanka did not use the reviews wisely and wasted them rather unnecessarily.

“We’ve given the responsibility of reviews to the captain and the wicket-keeper to decide, but we were not smart on this occasion. If you exhaust all your reviews with only three wickets down it is a big disadvantage for us. We need to sit down and discuss this further.” 

Nawaz said that once Pakistan had got a big first innings lead of 149 Sri Lanka were always playing catch-up cricket. 

“Ideally, we should have had another 100 runs more on the board. But we are going to go hard at them and try to put as much pressure as possible on the Pakistani batsmen to try and see what we can get out of it. If we can get through one or two wickets of their top order, it is not going to be easy. Our batting, bowling and fielding needs another 20 percent boost.”