Sri Lanka could have needed to be shaken back to
reality, and it might have been for the best in the long term. This is how Sri
Lanka’s coach Chris Silverwood felt after his team was humiliated by 10 wickets
in the Asia Cup final. In the championship game, Sri Lanka was dismissed for 50
runs before India sprinted to the goal in seven overs.
“Sometimes a bit of a kick up the rear end is not
the worst thing going into a World Cup,” he said. “Maybe this is just
a wake-up call, that for us to compete against teams like India, Australia, and
New Zealand – those types of guys – we have to be on top of our game. Maybe
there’s something we can use out of this that can motivate us heading into that
World Cup.
“Clearly it was a bad day in the office. Clearly
we came up against a very high-class bowling unit. It was a shame to finish the
way we did. It’s one of those things we can’t dwell on too much because we’ve
got a big tournament coming up. There are lessons to learn and questions to be
asked in the dressing room. We have to move forward.”
However, Silverwood acknowledged the strength of Sri
Lanka’s effort up until the championship game. They defeated Pakistan in a
nail-biter, Afghanistan in a game where they needed to win in the 40th over to
qualify based on net run rate, and Bangladesh twice. They also narrowly
defeated Afghanistan.
“We played some very good cricket to get to the
final. We had to fight very hard. For me it was an achievement.”
Silverwood said.
“But if we take today out of the equation, we’ve
seen two youngsters put their hands up, in Dunith Wellalage, and Matheesha
Pathirana. We’ve seen two of them really put up their hands on the world stage.
Sadeera [Samarawickrama]’s played some good knocks (he hit 215 runs at 35.83).
[Kusal] Mendis has come back into form (270 runs at 45). But clearly
consistency is something we need to bring into the game.”