Charith Asalanka, who scored 65 against India admitted that the hosts tried hard and took the game to the final over but were unfortunate to be on the losing side. He also insisted that bowlers apart from Wanindu Hasaranga have to find ways to get wickets and not be reliant on him.
At 116/5, Sri Lanka were in a position of ascendancy against a strong Indian side, despite the absence of several ‘A’ listers for the visitors. But the Indian team, even without their best side, crawled their way from a miserable position, through Deepak Chahar’s knock of 69 for a heist in Colombo.
While Sri Lanka lost the game despite being in a great position, there were several positives, including the form of Charith Asalanka, who scored a 68-ball 65 against India in the second ODI. The batter admitted that the entire team tried their level best to take it to the final over but stated that they were unfortunate to be on the wrong side of the result.
“We’re all emotional – the team and coaches are all emotional. 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,” said Asalanka.
For Sri Lanka, Wanindu Hasaranga was yet again the star bowler, with figures of 3-37 in his ten overs, where he accounted for Prithvi Shaw, Shikhar Dhawan and Krunal Pandya. Despite his terrific performance, the other bowlers around him could not wrap the Indian batting order, which irked Asalanka. The young batsman insisted that the bowlers have to talk amongst themselves to figure out a way to get wickets when those situations persist.
“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,” he added.
That was not all, the hosts were yet again poor in the field, with many dismal attempts at stopping the ball, including several missed opportunities. Asalanka stated that the fielding needs a quick fix before admitting that the team also needs to stop the opposition lower order from scoring runs.
“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,” Asalanka said.