Being captain of the present Sri Lanka team is no easy task, it is close to a nightmare and one has only to sympathise with Angelo Mathews because all the hard work the players put in at practice is not bearing fruit in the middle during matches.
The first ODI played at the Galle International Stadium after 17 years on Friday should have been a cakewalk for Sri Lanka against Zimbabwe, but instead, the ghosts of Cardiff returned to haunt them as they spilled three crucial catches and put on a mediocre bowling performance to allow the visitors to chase down 317 and win quite comfortably by six wickets.
So instead of being one-up Sri Lanka find themselves trailing 0-1 and under pressure to win the remaining four matches if they are to clinch the series that is so important to improve their current ODI rankings.
“We have so many young guys in the team and we need to get the attitude and intense right when it comes to fielding. Today it was very poor,” said Mathews at the post-match press conference.
“We have to address it quickly as we have only one day and then we have to come back and win on Sunday. It’s the mindset. One day of skill work won’t help you. We need to have a shift in mind to stop runs and take those catches. We don’t have to panic. We have four more games. We need to get our mindset right and do well on Sunday.
“It was very disappointing and very disheartening the way we went about things. It was below par. We had enough resources to restrict them. We all know that catches win matches. It’s a true fact. Dropping crucial catches was the turning point today,” he said.
After running up a healthy score of 315-5, Sri Lanka would have backed themselves to defend it.
“I thought we had enough on the board. It was turning a bit. We had the bowlers to defend it, but we didn’t bowl well.
Poor performance by the bowlers and fielding once again let us down,” said Mathews.
“We dropped crucial catches at crucial moments can’t say enough. We have trained extremely hard on fielding, but it’s just that on crucial occasions we keep dropping catches which cost us the game.
“The pressure gets to the guys sometimes. When someone is under pressure and when the catches come we miss. Pressure is something that you deal with day in and day out. It’s disappointing to see the best of fielders dropping catches. We need to take those catches. We left them off the hook. There is no excuse for bad fielding,” he said.
With Sri Lanka employing the services of four spinners the Zimbabwean batsmen managed to successfully execute the sweep and reverse sweep shots to good effect.
“We should give credit to their batsmen who kept sweeping and reverse sweeping against our spinners. They took the spinners off the line. They deserve credit for the way they batted.”
Huge confidence for the rest of the series – mire
Man of the Match Solomon Mire on whose maiden ODI ton, Zimbabwe scripted their famous win said, “Coming into this series we were sort of preparing to have those options (employing the sweep and reverse sweep) for us to use because we were thinking the wickets might be a bit challenging for spin.
The fact that it worked today is something that we would try and continue utilizing.”
Mire said that Zimbabwe would take a huge lot of confidence from this win for the rest of the series. “There is a bit more belief in the team. When we started today at one stage we thought we would be chasing quite a big score about 350. To be able to bring it back the way we did gave us a little bit of momentum going when we went to bat,” said Mir.
“We had the belief that if we batted for a long period we would be able to compete in the game and winning really capped it off for us. It’s such a huge thing for Zimbabwe cricket to be able to win against a top ranked team like Sri Lanka,” he said.
“It just allows the hope for the fans and the people who are following the team and allows them to stay in and stay involved. Hopefully we will get more support from our people back home and all round the world as well.”
Mir whose previous highest score in 17 ODIs was 54, said that his 112 off 96 balls was ‘very special’ because it helped his team to script a famous win.
“It was a very satisfying especially considering it was such a huge win for us. We have beaten Sri Lanka here for the first time so I am happy to contribute to the win,” said Mir. “It was pretty tough and I was cramping up half way through.
I tried to keep my fluids up drinking and rehydrating but it is something that takes a bit of time to get used to the heat. Hopefully going forward we will be better prepared.
“We challenged ourselves we knew that if someone batted a long time and made a 100 it would put us in a good position to be able to chase. We have been trying to work something like that in the last few months and it was due.
“We needed someone to actually put his hand up and score some runs lucky enough it worked for us today. Hopefully going forward the template we will be to try and bat as long as possible and the runs will come,” Mir said.