SL under pressure to deliver against confident Netherlands

 Sri Lanka Assistant Coach Naveed Nawaz in conversation with Captain Kusal Mendis during a practice session at Ekana Stadium, Lucknow

• Crucial game to move forward in World Cup

LUCKNOW: With losses in their first three matches of the Cricket World Cup and without any points on the board Sri Lanka come up against a Netherlands side beaming with confidence after their stunning win over South Africa when they meet at the Ekana Stadium here on Saturday.

It’s a must-win game for Sri Lanka who badly needs a win to boost their confidence for the rest of the World Cup.  

“Obviously, we haven’t got any points so far. There is a pressure to win a game. The last couple of games we have been performing on and off well in departments, but I think we are yet to produce a tidy game so far,” said Sri Lanka Assistant Coach Naveed at the pre-match media conference. “We have addressed issues and we have trained the last couple of days with a new captain in place. I think the group is positive and we are looking forward to it.”

Nawaz admitted that Sri Lanka’s batting has an issue with the top, middle and late order not clicking uniformly. 

“The first two games, from a batting perspective I think we did well. The main thing is that we have a clear plan of how we want to bat in the middle and different players have their different methods of playing. It’s important that we all align individual performance into a team plan,” said Nawaz. “We have discussed that and hopefully the players are very clear of how we are planning to go about it. We are looking forward to continuing the normal performance as a batting group.”

“We have drawn up plans about how we are going to play in the rest of the tournament, but it’s very important that we stay in the present and deal with the challenges which you face next. We are not thinking too far ahead. We are trying to deal with what we have in hand and move forward.”

Nawaz was quite frank with the bowling resources that Sri Lanka have at their disposal.

“As you know, we came into this tournament with a lot of injuries to our main bowlers. We have been having this in the last couple of months. Wanindu Hasaranga and Dushmantha Chameera were ruled out. Mahesh Theekshana was out for the first couple of games. So, we had a concern there, to be honest,” said Nawaz.

“We are playing with a really young group of bowlers, so they are bound to make mistakes. The way forward is how we can learn from mistakes. It’s a long tournament, it’s a nine-game tournament we are playing. I think the players have room to learn and improve their capabilities, because we’ve got a very capable group, no doubt, and the tournament is long enough for them to learn from their mistakes and move forward. We are still hopeful to play a tidy game tomorrow and to see our chances moving forward.”

Sri Lanka defeated Netherlands twice in the World Cup Qualifiers but it will be a different ball game today.

“If we assess those two games that we played against Sri Lanka, it’s our batting department that probably didn’t live up to the expectation that we needed to,” said Netherland’s Indian-born batting all-rounder Theja Nidamanuru.

“I think in the final we played, we kept them down to a good score, we could have chased that, but obviously their spin through the middle was something that troubled us. The likes of Hasaranga, for example, and Theekshana have bowled really well against most batters in the world, but in those conditions where the ball was turning a little bit off the straight and it was tricky. That’s something we’ve looked into and we’ve addressed and worked extremely hard on – playing spin and being able to rotate strike through the middle a little bit better. That’s a key area in the game that we need to do well to get a positive result against Sri Lanka in this game.”

Sri Lanka are without Hasaranga for this tournament due to an injury but Nidamanuru said, “Sri Lanka have always produced great quality spin bowlers, so whoever they have in their team, they’ll still be a threat. It’s just about us being able to manage what is in our control really well and if we can do that and I’m sure we can execute and you know it’s a game. There’s an opportunity obviously for both teams. We enter into it with a very positive frame of mind whether we’re playing spin or pace.”