SL Will Field Best XI Against Oman, Says Shanaka

It doesn’t take a deep dive into cricket analytics to see what the biggest headache for Sri Lanka cricket is ahead of the T20 World Cup – a cursory glance at the list of top run-scorers in the recently concluded T20I series against South Africa would do. The man chastised for his slow scoring rate is also the team’s highest run-scorer, and the only batsman to have scored a half-century.

- Shehan Daniel

By no means is Dinesh Chandimal the archetype T20 batsmen, or this an argument for his inclusion in the team for the World Cup, but the fact that he stayed at the crease longer than any other Sri Lankan batsman in the series – he played just two of the three T20Is -- and is still considered one of the problems in Sri Lanka’s T20 World Cup squad, is an indictment of how poorly stocked and prepared Sri Lanka’s batting is heading into the showpiece tournament.

The catalyst for the 3-0 series defeat to South Africa was failure with the bat, which captain Dasun Shanaka accepted in the aftermath of one of Sri Lanka’s most embarrassing series T20I series defeats at home.

“We need to respect the bowler, but we also gave up soft dismissals and it was because of that that it looked like we couldn’t get the singles. If we kept wickets in hand, we could have got to 150-160 runs,” Shanaka said.

Almost everything that Sri Lanka did wrong in that series, in the batting department atleast, can be extrapolated from that statement – soft dismissals, poor strike rotation and woefully below par totals.