SL Head Coach Mickey Arthur during yesterday’s virtual press conference 

By Sa’adi Thawfeeq

With legendary white-ball bowler Lasith Malinga no longer part of the team, Sri Lanka will be looking for a collective bowling performance from the bowlers they have brought to England to get their best results in the upcoming T20I and ODI series, Head Coach Mickey Arthur told the Sri Lanka media in a virtual conference from Manchester yesterday.

“Lasith is a legend of the game, he was world class, he was the best at his trade in the game. It’s key for us to develop somebody who can do that role and it’s going to take a lot,” said Arthur. 

“I am comfortable with ‘Dushy’ Chameera developing all the time; we’ve got Isuru Udana and Nuwan Pradeep. Then we got some younger seamers in Asitha Fernando, Shiran Fernando, Dhananjaya Lakshan, Ishan Jayaratne and Chamika Karunaratne. We’ve got a lot of bowling which we did by design to bring over here to create that depth and order within our white-ball 

bowling.

“Malinga was an absolute legend of the game, hopefully we can develop somebody to be as good as him. But for us, it’s going to be about a collective bowling performance to ultimately get our best results.”

Sri Lanka are aware what they are up against and Arthur certainly made no bones about the 

England team.      

“They are a wonderful white-ball team and even though they haven’t played much as a team, all their players have been playing in the Vitality Blast T20. All their white-ball players are playing in the domestic competitions for the last two weeks or so, so they’ll be ready and prepared,” said Arthur. “It’s a massive challenge for our young team. As long as we keep progressing and keep getting better, we can start building a team that can compete with the rest of the world. That for me is the focus.”

Arthur said the tour to Bangladesh was the start of a white-ball journey for the team where they changed their brand of cricket.

“It is up to us as coaches to upskill the players and get them to the required level to compete internationally. To see the players going head-to-head yesterday (Wednesday), competing with each other for positions, it certainly heartened the challenge. We had good training and we had a good competitive game yesterday and this training block has been really good for us.”

Arthur also addressed one of the key failings of the Lankan batting, which has been an unsettled batting order and poor strike rates.

“We’ve got to settle down on a batting order as soon as we can, we can’t be jumping around with players batting in so many different positions, it creates confusion,” said Arthur. 

“And each position is so different, what we have tried to do in our training block is just to nail down the guys’ roles, the guys know exactly what’s required of them.”

“I’ve looked and studied what the best teams in the world are doing. I’ve looked at the strike rates, averages and everything pertaining to a good solid batting line up. I’ve tried to adjust our batting order to make sure that the players set themselves goals in terms of what best practices in international cricket, in terms of strike rates in every position is, but more importantly we’ve gone out and practiced that in the nets. That for me is the key,” continued Arthur.

“The guys are aware now what their roles are going to be and now it’s just going to be about backing those players and being consistent with our selections. Backing them to do the job and hopefully, when we get some results in terms of their strike rates, becoming world class and not average.”

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