By Dhammika Ratnaweera
Sri Lanka’s batting coach Grant Flower was a shocked man after his team’s dismal batting performance on the opening day of the first Test against England at Galle as he termed to be the worst batting performance he has seen from them.
“I’ve been with the team for a year and it’s the worst batting performance I’ve seen from our team. It’s purely mental. I don’t have enough reasons to explain that. Every single batsman should take the blame,” said Flower at the end of a horrendous first day for Sri Lanka.
“They’ve only got themselves to blame. One of the guys was unlucky – Dasun Shanaka – it came off (Jonny) Bairstow’s ankle, but the rest got themselves out. There was some decent bowling but the pitch isn’t a minefield so there are no excuses,” he said.
Asked what advice he can give the Lankan batters after such a dismal display, Flower said: “I can’t give much technical advice, I can only speak to them about the mental aspect and I’ve said what I was thinking regarding their dismissals. But I’ve only spoken to a few as well as the coach. I don’t know, I am at a loss for words, I’ve never seen us bat that badly. Whether it was nerves coming back from South Africa I don’t know. They know these conditions so well so they should have had a big advantage over England, but the England batsmen showed us this afternoon that there is nothing wrong with the pitch so far. It’s going to get worse and today it played well and we batted terribly.”
Flower said that Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow assessed the pitch better than the Sri Lankans.
“They are both very good players of spin and they adjusted to it accordingly. They put the bad balls away and they used the sweep well. They showed the Sri Lankans, who are all good players of spin, how to play well on a turning track. Hopefully, we will take some lessons and bat a lot better in the second innings.”
Sri Lankan had to play without their skipper Dimuth Karunaratne last minute as his finger injury once again improved during the following day practices. Dinesh Chamdimal once again got a chance to captain the side. But their top order was struggling with the bowling of Stuart Broad while spinner Bess did most of the damage by claiming five wickets. Sri Lanka was dismissed for 135 which was the lowest test first innings total at Galle.
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