SL Captain seeks forgiveness from fans for team’s dismal showing

Sri Lanka Captain Kusal Perera

National white-ball cricket Captain Kusal Perera has asked cricket fans to forgive his team’s dismal performances in the three T20Is against England and said that they would rectify their mistakes as soon as possible and start winning again.

In a virtual media conference yesterday ahead of today’s first ODI against England at Durham, Perera said: “As captain I ask the fans to forgive us for our poor performances. We are happy that we still have fans who are still supportive of the team. We hope to rectify our mistakes as soon as possible and try and bring the smiles back to their faces.”

Batting has been the major issue for Sri Lanka in the T20I series and they are no better off at the start of the three-match ODI series losing four key players – all batters in Avishka Fernando (injured), Kusal Mendis, Niroshan Dickwella and Danushka Gunathilaka (all three suspended by SLC for breach of bio-bubble).

“We have to go to tomorrow’s game (Tuesday) with young players against one of the best ODI sides in the world. It won’t be easy. We can see a big gap. We saw that during the T20I series, but we are prepared to fight hard and be more competitive. What we learnt is that we don’t compete enough, we have to play good cricket to be competitive,” said Perera. 

“We are planning to play some of the newcomers in the ODI series and that includes uncapped Charith Asalanka. All the new players have a good opportunity of playing in the series.”

Dhananjaya de Silva, who is 31 runs shy of 1,000 ODI runs, and Pathum Nissanka, who has played in six ODIs so far, are two options Sri Lanka will be looking at towards strengthening their depleted batting.

“As a batting unit we are very disappointed with our performance in the T20Is. From the positive side, our bowling has kept improving since the Bangladesh series and the fielding has also shown improvement, but without the batting we cannot win a match nor a series,” said Perera.

“We spoke about it and decided that the batsmen must take responsibility and score. The conditions are not easy but that is not an excuse because as cricketers we must be able to play under all conditions. Coming and playing from an Asian country is not easy to adjust so quickly to the cold and on top of that to counter the pace and bounce from the pitch. We can’t make adjustments as quickly as we would like to. Some players take a long time some adjust quickly. We must find a way of how to cope with the tough conditions and come up with options on how to score runs,” he said.

“We saw how England batted, bowled and fielded and there was a marked difference between the two sides. That much we must accept and see how they finish off the matches and learn something from that and see how we can give them a good contest.” (ST)