By Rahul Jeyanthan
Sri Lanka’s path to the semifinals of the World T20 are looking increasingly slim but hope still lingers of a miracle. For any permutations involving other teams to come into play though, Sri Lanka must beat England first and foremost, which is going to be the toughest challenge faced by the team so far, especially given our abysmal performance in the series between the two teams earlier this year England is a formidable team with few obvious weaknesses and Sri Lanka will have to be on the very top of their game to have any chance of overcoming them.
Favourable Conditions
The major point in favour for Sri Lanka is the fact that this match will be played in Sharjah, the venue of 3 of Sri Lanka’s previous matches and with conditions that play to the team’s strengths especially on the bowling front. It will also be England’s first match at the venue and as a result there might be a certain adaption that needs to be made by both the English batsmen and bowlers
The points made in the previous preview with regards to the playing conditions stand mostly true with set batsmen being especially valuable in the tough batting conditions as well as chasing being the way to go. However, the likes of David Miller and to a lesser extent Pathum Nissanka did show that scoring quickly at the death is possible but in the same game Dwayne Pretorius also showed that sticking with the plan of bowling cutters into the pitch makes it pretty tough for the batting side too.
Beware of Rashid
In what seems like déjà vu, I seem to be writing about Sri Lanka’s weakness against wrist spin once again with Adam Zampa and Tabraiz Shamsi precipitating collapses in the Sri Lankan batting line up. In Adil Rashid, England have one of the best limited overs spinners out there and he has had previous success against Sri Lanka as well. He will be supported in the leg spin department by the surprise success of Liam Livingstone. As in the previous matches it is the left handers Rashid has a less favourable match up against with left handers scoring at close to 8 runs per over against Rashid when compared to 7 by right handers and it will once again be up to the likes of Charith Asalanka and Bhanuka Rajapaksha to target the leg spinners and this will be a make-or-break matchup for Sri Lanka. England have also been by far the most successful bowling team in the powerplay and it seems likely that we might see Moeen Ali back opening the bowling to target Kusal Perera. It will also be up to the Sri Lankan top order to negotiate Chris Woakes, who has shown himself to be one of the most effective new ball operators out there.
Take a punt on Wanindu
Even though England’s bowling has shown its strength its in the batting where their true strength lies with an explosive batting lineup. In my opinion it will be a worthwhile option considering opening the bowling with Wanindu Hasaranga, especially given that both Buttler and Roy have less than favourable match ups against legspin, especially in the powerplay with Roy averaging just 18 and getting out 8 times against legspin in the powerplay while Buttler also averages 28 in comparison to a career figure of over 50.In fact, both South Africa and Pakistan used Imran Tahir and Shadab Khan successfully to open the bowling in the 2019 World Cup with the specific plan of targeting Roy’s weakness against leg spin.
Even in the middle order spin seems to be the way to go with Dawid Malan especially shown himself to struggle a bit against spin, especially in Asian conditions while Johnny Bairstow has also shown himself susceptible to getting out to leg spin, actually getting out to leggies 10 times out of the 17 he has faced them in the IPL (credit goes to Dulan Edirisinghe for pointing this out). Therefore it seems that Wanindu will have an even greater role to play than he usually does in today’s game and his success with the ball could well be the deciding factor between a win and a loss
Even though England approach this match as considerable favourites given their personnel and their current form, Sri Lanka have a few trump cards such as familiarity to conditions that might help this young team pull off a surprise win
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