The ongoing year has already seen Angelo Mathews stepping down as the captain after the shocking series loss at home against Zimbabwe, but current Sri Lanka skipper Upul Tharanga is in no mood to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor in the aftermath of the 5-0 whitewash against Pakistan.
The dwindling fortunes of Sri Lankan cricket in the 50-over format discovered another low on Monday (October 23) when the Islanders suffered a thumping nine-wicket loss to suffer their second consecutive and third whitewash of this year.
Barring the toss, nothing went Sri Lanka’s way, as the reigning Champions Trophy holders made a mockery of them. Batting first, the Islanders were blown away by Usman Khan’s five-wicket haul and were all out for just 103. In reply, the hosts chased down the total inside 21 overs to register their 9th consecutive win.
The defeat was Sri Lanka’s 12th in a row, as Tharanga is yet to register a single win since being handed the captaincy on a permanent basis. However, the opening batsman is no mood to leave the team in soup and walk away.
“It’s the responsibility of the selectors and the board. I don’t want to leave the team and go. The board will decide who will take the team forward,” Tharanga told journalists after the loss.
“As captain, I would like to take the blame for the defeats. The batsmen also need to take a fair share of the blame. We have to score as a team. Batsmen can fail two or three games, but not all five games. It’s tough when we don’t perform as a team,” he added.
The cause of the defeats has been pretty much similar- batting failures. Batting collapses have been the feature of Sri Lanka this year, and as a result, they have managed to win just four of the 26 games this year. Tharanga admitted that batting failures had been the reason behind the below par performances.
“We repeated the same mistakes. In this game, we were four wickets down in the third over, and there was no coming back from thereon. In the last 15 to 18 months, we have struggled with our batting, and that has been the main reason why we have come up with below-par performances,” he explained.
Tharanga also expressed his disappointment over the way the batsmen failed to deliver on the pitches which were not unplayable.
“We had a lot of discussions. We have analyzed what needs to be done. What we have failed to do is to deliver in the middle,” he said.
“What is really disappointing is that these were not unplayable wickets. They were very good tracks. We were just not good enough. Today we tried to change the line-up a little by sending Niroshan Dickwella at number five as he is very good against spin, but we just lost too many wickets earlier on,” Tharanga added.