Lankan captain rues missed chances and top order batting failure for defeat

Dimuth Karunaratne

Sri Lanka captain Dimuth Karunaratne blamed his team’s top order batsmen for failing to put up a good first innings total and for the missed chances that attributed to their defeat by four wickets in the first Test against Pakistan at Galle yesterday.

“There two areas where we went wrong. After winning the toss we weren’t able to put up a big total. The top order must take the responsibility. We lost four wickets in the first session,” said Karunaratne at the post-match press conference.

“We got good starts in partnerships but weren’t able to convert them into big ones. That was one of the biggest setbacks. In this match all our main batters didn’t make runs. Usually, two or three batters perform in the top seven, but apart from Dhananjaya’s (De Silva) contribution there was nothing big from the rest.”

“The other contributory factor was when Pakistan had lost five wickets for 101, we failed to capitalise by missing the chances that came our way. We should have stopped about 100 runs if we had held onto the catches.”

Pakistan captain Babar Azam said the last time they were in Sri Lanka they won against the same bowling line up and they worked on it to be successful against the spinners.

“Our plans against the Sri Lankan bowling were that we backed our skills and we played our natural game. I told them to play a little bit positive against the spinners,” said Babar.   

“We also have worked on improving our run rate while batting. We maintained a 4½ run rate in this match and we hope to keep that up in the next Test as well.”

“When your teammates perform well and your team wins the match it gives a lot of confidence, especially if you are playing in different conditions. Youngsters like Saud (Shakeel), (Aghar) Salman and Abrar (Ahmed) stepped up and performed.”

Babar had a word of praise for Saud who scored a double hundred and was named Player of the Match.

“Saud has improved a lot. He has been working hard. After the New Zealand series, he attended two camps in Lahore and Karachi. I spoke with him and he told me he had developed a few shots which he applied in this innings. As captain I am very satisfied with his performance. When he came to bat, we had lost four wickets and Saud and Salman built a partnership that gave us the big lead.” – (ST)