The Test match is still alive says batting coach Naveed Nawaz

Sri Lanka’s batting coach Naveed Nawaz believes the second cricket Test against Ireland is still alive despite the threat of rain cutting down a large portion of the playing time.

With two days to go Sri Lanka trail Ireland by 135 runs in the first innings and will be looking to utilise the days to convert the match into a win for them.

“Before the rains came, I was confident that we could get a result out of the match but after we lost a session today, we have to sit down tomorrow and work out a strategy on how we can win this match,” said Nawaz at the end of play.

“We are 135 behind Ireland and after wiping out that deficit if we can get a lead of about 200 and if there is some turn on the fifth day 60 overs is a long time to bat. There are another 180 overs left in the match. We are scoring at 4½ runs an over and if we bat for 90 overs, we can get to a good total.”       

“Since we’ve lost this session, first of all we have to pass their total of 492 and then depending on how much time we have in our hands try and see how far we can get ahead of them and not to bat again.”

Ryan Eagleson, Ireland’s fast bowling coach said it was an extremely difficult and frustrating day for them on the field.

“Anytime the opposition put on the amount of runs like they did today for one wicket was very frustrating. We know the class of the Sri Lankan batters, they showed it today on what is still a good batting surface,” said Eagleson.  “I think we made it a little easier for them. Credit to the Sri Lankan batters how they went about it today. They put us under pressure from ball one.”

“It all boils down to consistency. I don’t think we put the ball in the right areas consistently. Curtis Campher and Graham Hume did a reasonable job upfront, a couple of half chances created. The Sri Lankan batters are very good at maneuvering the ball and if we bowled a bad ball, it was put away for a four or a six.”

“We couldn’t really build up pressure. It’s a massive learning curve for us against this kind of opposition. The top six batters of Sri Lanka at Galle have fantastic averages and they showed that today. It’s going to take time for us to build up that sort of mentality of red ball cricket.” – (ST)