‘We’re a young team. We haven’t won much recently, and we’re trying to do our best to play together for our country’
“We’re all emotional – the team and coaches are all emotional,” he said. “We’re a young team. We haven’t won much recently, and we’re trying to do our best to play together for our country. Everyone tried hard and took it to the final over, but unfortunately we couldn’t win.”
“What we talked about in the 40th over was to push the game deep,” Asalanka said. “We wanted to increase their required rate. But they were successful because they didn’t lose any wickets. They had a plan to play Wanindu out defensively and get runs off everyone else, and it worked. If they’d tried to get runs off Wanindu, then maybe they would have lost. I guess the other bowlers have to talk and figure out how to get a wicket in that situation.”
Sri Lanka were also sloppy with their ground fielding, conceding at least five boundaries that could have been stopped by outfielders. Asalanka noted this as an area to work on.
“We did make some mistakes in the field, and we gave away more than 10 runs in the field. We need to fix that. Nos. 8 and 9 also scored runs, so we have to figure out how to stop that as well.”
Andrew Fidel Fernando is ESPNcricinfo’s Sri Lanka correspondent. @afidelf