Kusal Mendis, the leading run-getter in the T20 World Cup completed back-toback fifties

Wanindu Hasaranga is the leading bowler in the competition with nine wickets

• We have to raise the bar and play our A game: Naveed

PERTH: Having overcome the first hurdle – beating Ireland pretty convincingly by nine wickets with five overs to spare on Sunday, Sri Lanka face their first big challenge when they take on the defending champions and host Australia in their second Group 1 match at Perth on Tuesday.

With hardly any breathing space after the first game, Sri Lanka have only one-day to arrive in Perth before meeting an Australian side smarting from their 89-run thrashing at the hands of New Zealand. But the team is in good shape despite the challenges they have faced with the weather, pitches and the tight itinerary. 

Moving from one match to the next inside two days may also turn out to be to Sri Lanka’s advantage, as they will be fresh from the win over the Irish to continue their momentum into the next game.

“The boys are enjoying the pitches over here which look really good for batting and I am sure the coldness is not in their mind. The team has been here for the last 20 days but the weather is not in their control. I am sure they are not thinking about it,” said Sri Lanka’s assistant coach Naveed Nawaz looking ahead at the match against Australia.

“We’ve got to do our basics right, that’s number one. We have been doing it in the last couple of games. Batting, bowling and fielding we need to raise the bar because from now on we are going to have a few strong games. We have to make fewer mistakes and play our A game.”

With their win against Netherlands followed by the win over Ireland, Sri Lanka have shown that they have more or less overcome the injuries suffered to some of their key players.

“Losing someone like Dushmantha Chameera and Dilshan Madushanka were a big loss for us. Luckily, we had a couple of replacements in Lahiru Kumara and Binura Fernando coming in and bowling really well today (Sunday) as well as in the game before,” said Nawaz.

“Batting wise it would be nice to have Pathum (Nissanka) back but we got a very good replacement in Ashen Bandara to replace Pathum (for the Ireland game) so that we could push Dhananjaya de Silva to open. 

“It seems to work really well with Charith Asalanka batting at number three which was his usual position before he got dropped from the team. We hope that Pathum will be available for the game against Australia. We have given his injury (groin) 4-5 days and he will be bat at the next practice session before the game. We will make a call on that.”

De Silva (31) in partnership with Kusal Mendis gave Sri Lanka a solid platform to chase down the Irish total of 128-8 by putting on 63 for the first wicket. Asalanka (31*) and Mendis carried the team to victory with another stand of 70.

Mendis completed back-to-back fifties when he finished unbeaten on 68 off 43 balls (5 fours, 3 sixes) to take the Player of the Match award in successive matches. He scored a match winning 79 against Netherlands three days ago, and is currently the leading run-getter of the ongoing T20 World Cup with 171 runs (avg. 57) and an impressive strike rate of 161.32.

“We saw the same form during the Asia Cup as well, Kusal scored quite a lot of runs. In the last couple of series after he was shifted from number four to open the innings it has made a tremendous effect on his batting. His roles are defined and it seems to be working pretty good for him,” said Nawaz who is also the batting coach of the Lankan side.

“We’ve got a strong middle order with Mendis, Pathum, Dhananjaya and Charith batting at the top and (Dasun) Shanaka, Bhanuka (Rajapaksa), Wanindu (Hasaranga) and Chamika (Karunaratne) batters in the middle who could manage at the death and if a couple of wickets fell early to cope with that as well.”

Sri Lanka has also been experimenting with their part time bowlers to increase their options for the matches ahead using ten overs of spin against Ireland.

“It’s more of expanding the strengths,” explained Nawaz. 

“We had eight overs of spin from our main bowlers (Hasaranga and Maheesh Theekshana) and a couple of overs from the part-timers as well (De Silva) which we thought will come in handy. Dhananjaya has been bowling in other series that we have played so we have plans to use him a little bit more during this game which worked really well for us.”

With two wickets in his final over against Ireland, Hasaranga took his tally in the tournament to nine wickets to top the list, two more than Bas de Leede of Netherlands and Theekshana who both have seven apiece.

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