By Dhammika Ratnaweera
Following a back to back defeats against visiting New Zealand, which costs the series with one game to spare, Sri Lanka’s T20 cricket captain Lasith Malinga says that he is happy with the performances of his team, which had produced fighting against the runners-up of the ODI world cup two months ago.
“I want the young players to show they are made for international cricket, Actually we tried our best and young players put on a decent score. But there were some mistakes to get second defeat of the series. However, we are still really happy with the fighting effort. That is how we want to go about to the future.” said Malinga.
He believes that the journey towards the T20 World Cup, which is a year away with another 17 matches to play before will be full of lessons to learn before they make the final outfit to go into the world cup. “They are still in the learning process. This is a very nice experience for the youngsters to play under lights. They have to realize what kind of service wanted to do the game to win . Especially we were very positive in these two games. T-20 game is especial and players have to adjust their mentality to focus this game. This is very important for us to go ahead” said Malinga who is one wicket away from completing 100 T-20 wickets milestone.
He said that there is still a game to play in this series on Friday and they would correct their mistakes and come back to win the game to convert to a winning mentality. “I never think about my personal milestone and always wanted to play the game to win,” added Malinga.
Meanwhile, New Zealand T-20 skipper Tim Southee said that it had been a couple of great games in front of great crowds. “It got close but we back our batsmen all the way down, a little bit of luck went our way. It was pleasing to see Tom Bruce do well in his first game. Colin has been impressive in this series and it was pleasing to see Seth Rance bounce back the way he did. We have to do an injury check and see who’s available for the next game. Southee was adjudged the man of the match in the second game with his impressive figures of 2 for 18 in his four overs spell.
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