England arrives

Tuesday, 22 March 2011 00:03 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Chennai, March 21 (ANI): England batsman Ian Bell is confident that his team can beat Sri Lanka in their own backyard in Saturday’s World Cup quarterfinal at Colombo’s R.Premadasa Stadium.

Bell said that they will draw on the memory of their one-day series win the last time they played in Sri Lanka in 2007.

“We’re excited to be going to Sri Lanka. That’s the place we wanted to go because we had success on our last one-day tour there three winters ago and won 3-2,” the Sun quoted Bell, as saying.

“But it will be tough. Sri Lanka are as good as any team in the world at the moment,” he added.

Bell further said that despite the team’s long season so far, they are ready to give everything in the final three games of the six-week tournament.

“You saw against the West Indies how desperate we are to win and that is a really good sign regardless of what has happened in the past few months. It’s not what has gone that matters, it is what is to come that we focus on, though there is no point looking too far ahead,” Bell said.

“We have three games to win it so that looks quite nice, but we don’t need to look beyond Sri Lanka. If we put in a good performance there we will take a lot of confidence from it,” he added.

Match official appointments for quarter-final stage announced

The match official appointments are as follows:

23 March - Pakistan v West Indies, Mirpur Chris Broad (match referee), Billy Bowden and Steve Davis (both on-field), Daryl Harper (third umpire), Bruce Oxenford (fourth umpire) 24 March - Australia v India, Ahmedabad Ranjan Madugalle (match referee), Marais Erasmus and Ian Gould (both on-field), Richard Kettleborough (third umpire), Asad Rauf (fourth umpire) 25 March - South Africa v New Zealand, Mirpur Roshan Mahanama (match referee), Aleem Dar and Rod Tucker (both on-field), Kumar Dharmasena (third umpire), Nigel Llong (fourth umpire) 26 March - Sri Lanka v England, Colombo Jeff Crowe (match referee), Billy Doctrove and Simon Taufel (both on-field), Tony Hill (third umpire), Shavir Tarapore (fourth umpire).

Appointments for the semi-finals and final will be made in due course