By Akila Senevirathne
Sri Lanka defeated the Netherlands by 8 wickets after bowling them out for 44, the second-lowest total in T20 World Cup. Namibia pull off a stunner against Ireland today and qualify for the first time into the Super Twelves.
Scotland share Sri Lanka’s success by finishing on a clean sheet by winning all 3 of their games and also qualifying for the first time into the Super Twelves. Bangladesh were obvious favourites to qualify and therefore can be left out from this write-up. What can we learn from this?
These three teams can be considered dark horses, including Sri Lanka because we were the only country who were former T20 World Cup champions and had to qualify for the Super Twelves. Sri Lanka lost to South Africa 3-0 at home. Injury concerns and batting woes haunted us.
What happened afterwards was a whole incident story and now Sri Lanka have won all recent games, including the more important qualifiers. While certain batting concerns exist, the entire bowling unit has been the key highlight. There are too many names to be mentioned because almost everyone stepped up when needed, as a team. Lahiru Kumara has definitely shown the most improvement, even winning the MOTM today while Theekshana leads the leader board in wickets.
As for Namibia, they did not have the best debut T20 World Cup games against Sri Lanka but they went on to beat Netherlands and Ireland. Gerhard Erasmus made a fifty and David Weise was the saviour in the last game with his fifty. Their bowling also improved but as far as the qualifications are concerned, they really deserved it for the effort.
Scotland were also well deserving winners of the qualifier spot. Oman were unlucky but in all 3 games, they made all-round performances. Davey and Berrington were standout players and Greaves in the first game against a strong Bangladesh team.
Bangladesh will face Sri Lanka on Sunday and it would be interesting to see how Sri Lanka continue their new found winning mantra, as well as the other teams who qualified to the Super Twelves.
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