“Will not replace a failing experienced player with a newcomer” Haturusinghe

By Dhammika Ratnaweera

Sri Lanka’s dismal performance in cricket continued as the national cricket team has been plunging into an ugly den, from which they had shown no signs of resurrection, since the last world cup in 2015. With the next world cup around, Sri Lankan had lost their credibility as a cricketing nation, as it was announced that the Sri Lankan matches have been under-rated.

To remedy an ailing national cricket squad, Sri Lanka Cricket even negotiated and brought down World’s then most demanded cricket coach, Sri Lankan Chandika Hathurusinghe, but it seemed the attitude of the national cricketers had not changed to bring them into winning ways.

At the end of another disastrous tour this time against England, coach Hathurusinghe had to come up with excuses for his team’s less fighting spiriting saying that the English cricket team played better cricket than us. “‘We were very close for victory especially second and third tests but Englishman played really well to beat us” admitted Hathurusinghe saying that his team made big mistakes in the field.

“Some people argued that our batting was a failure, but I cannot agree with them, we lost the last two matches by 57 and 42 runs, which could have been avoided in the field” said Haturusinghe affirming that even England found it difficult to make runs on these wickets.

Coach Hathurusinghe expressed his confidence in Kusal Mendis, who had been failing with the bat lately but came out with a near century in the last innings. “It was unfortunate the way Kusal Mendis was run out in the final innings, he is a good player and can come out strongly at any time,” said Haturusinghe.

He said that he is tired of new insertions to the main squad. “I am not in favour of replacing newcomers for the failure of some players in the main squad, this is my way of looking at it” said Hathurisnghe saying that we have a big challenge to make a team for the world cup and the upcoming tours in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa will certainly help the course.