"Can bounce back in fourth One-Day"- Dilshan

by Ranjan Anandappa in Dubai UAE

Sri Lanka skipper Tillekeratne Dilshan pledged his team is capable of bouncing back to contention in the fourth One-Day International cricket match in Sharjah on Friday. Dilshan reiterated that his team should rectify the mistakes and work on that and take the plus points into the next game to win. UAE being different, everything backfired once Sangakkara was run out. We did not bat badly. “Once I got out they came back and bowled really well. But still if one or two other batsmen gave the support to Angelo Mathews and batted a few more overs the story would have been different, but credit also should go to Pakistan as they bowled well during the last few overs,” said the Sri Lankan captain.

He said that Sangakkara’s run out and the manner in which he got out was the turning point of the Innings. “Sanga’s run out and my dismissal was certainly a turning point in the innings. I should have finished the match after getting the start, if I had batted for another five or six overs, the story would have been different.

Dilshan thought the manner in which the Pakistan openers Mohammad Hafeez and Imran Farhat got about that they would reach the 300 run mark. But he gave full credit to the Lankan bowlers who restricted them to 257 after being 151 for no loss in 29.2 overs.

“257 is a target well within our reach, the dew factor wasn’t there and the game swung towards Pakistan’s way. Our aim was to get a couple of batsmen to get going and a partnership between Sangakkara and myself, but unfortunately, both of us got out after getting a good start. If one had dug in till the 45th over or so we would have achieved the victory target,” he said.

He said that the team has done well in certain areas of the game and hoped to take all the positive aspects into the game in Sharjah and go step by step and try to win the match to square the series once again and make the fifth match interesting in Abu Dhabi.

With regard to the reintroduction of the two new white balls, Dilshan said that the players are gradually getting used to it. At the beginning of day/night games even during the time of the late Kerry Packer, the innovator of day/night games, two balls were used from either ends. These harder balls with the seam prominent helped the pace bowlers immensely in these games. But due to some reason, after some years the Cricket Authorities decided to play with one ball.

This made the ball get discoloured soon and softer which helped the batsmen specially during the power play and put up big scores even exceeding the 300 or 400 run mark at times. However, with the re-introduction of the two new white cricket balls we should seldom see teams reaching those proportions.

Now with the introduction of the two new balls a total in excess of over 250 is a good total to defend.