Angelo Mathews seeks positives despite drubbing
Jun 14, 2016 at 10:34 PM
There was very little to write about Sri Lanka’s underwhelming performance in the test series against England. The visitors were completely out of sorts at Leeds, as they lost by a crushing innings defeat. There was some improvement in the second innings at Durham, as wicketkeeper batsman Dinesh Chandimal played an outstanding knock to raise some hope for Sri Lanka. With the series done and dusted at Durham, Lord’s was pretty much a dead rubber.
However, post the third test which ended in a draw due to poor weather, there could be some positivity for the Sri Lankans. In the Lord’s test, the visitors batted well in the first innings and the inexperienced unit displayed signs of improvement. This has been well noticed by skipper Angelo Mathews, who backed his young side.
“This is a challenging tour for all the batsmen,” Mathews said. “I don’t want to mention one particular player. We all have to take responsibility. Apart from Chandimal, no one was able to score a hundred here, and I don’t want to let anyone down. We have to be a close unit and we have to keep working hard. We haven’t made a decision on the No. 4 position.”
Mathews mentioned that the tour would just enrich the young side. “This was a good learning experience for all of us,” he added. “We are a young team and we don’t have much experience. The way the guys fought facing Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad in challenging conditions was good to see.”
“The way they batted and they showed lots of guts – it was brilliant. If we play together as a unit we can improve further. We played pretty well in the second innings in Durham. At Lord’s, too, we were sitting pretty and then lost a heap of wickets on day three,” Mathews concluded.