INTERNATIONAL CRICKET

Sri Lanka not to lose wickets inside the Powerplay feels Nawaz

Sri Lanka Cricket

Sri Lanka’s journey in this year’s ICC T20 World Cup has been quite topsy-turvy.

Starting with the Super 12 qualifiers, Sri Lanka’s top order completely collapsed against Namibia.

Then in the game against New Zealand on Saturday, Sri Lanka lost their top three batters within two overs and then six wickets in the halfway stage of the game.

But, today, against Afghanistan, Sri Lanka made sure to keep their wickets intact.

Sri Lanka’s assistant coach, Naveed Nawaz says that this is the key aspect that the team needs to keep in mind when playing matches.

Today, Dhananjaya de Silva was in great form for Sri Lanka.

Says Nawaz,

We’ve been talking about losing less wickets during the powerplay as well as the first ten overs. If you look at the pattern that’s building in most teams, the number of runs that you get in the first ten overs has been far less than in the subcontinent. And the number of runs you get at the bottom end has been quite a bit.

So, against Afghanistan today, Sri Lanka made sure not to lose any of their wickets to Mujeeb Ur Rahman.

While Mujeeb did scalp the wicket of Pathum Nissanka, he gave away 13 runs in his last over.

Adding further, Nawaz says,

We knew that Mujeeb’s going to bowl at least two overs in the powerplay. So the plan was, even if we got less runs- somewhere around 25 to 30 runs in the first six overs- not to panic, and to keep wickets in hand. Once their main bowlers were bowled out, there were many bowlers we were thinking were gettable. We knew we were chasing 140, which is not a big total, and we could always get there.

De Silva successfully guided his team to a win and scored 66* from 42 balls.

For more updates, follow us on Twitter.

To Top