Past years for the Sri Lanka national cricket team have not been up to the mark. Since the veterans have left the team, they are not able to recover. Sri Lankan T20I captain Lasith Malinga is the power factor in the team. Now, the pacer has hinted that he will retire if Sri Lanka qualifies in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2020 knock-out rounds.
Sri Lanka might have hope that Lasith Malinga, who led the nation to win the ICC World T20 2014 trophy, will also lead the team to victory in the ICC T20 World Cup 2020. Malinga has a big responsibility to utilise talent in the current team rightly. But he is currently failing to handle the T20I side properly.
Lasith Malinga wants Sri Lanka to qualify the knock out rounds of T20 World Cup
In 2011, he announced the retirement from the Test cricket. After the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019, he ended his journey from the ODIs. Now, he has said that he is also thinking to retire from the T20I format too. It looks like his last wish is that the Sri Lanka team qualifies in the knock-out rounds before his retirement.
“I’ve already retired from Tests and ODIs. Now whatever is required for SL cricket. If they say it’s enough for me now then I’ll be really happy to retire from T20s also,” Malinga said on the eve of the series-opener against India.
“My only target is to play qualifying round in the T20 World Cup. If Sri Lanka qualify for the knockouts, I would never mind retiring anytime after that,” he added.
Currently, the Sri Lankan team has arrived Indian field to play the three-match T20I series, starting from Sunday (5 January). India has been dominant on the Islanders in this format. In the 16 T20I matches played between these two teams, India has won 11 matches so far. The stats clearly depicts that the host is favourite in this series. But Sri Lanka can not be underrated if we take a look at some comeback performances in last year.