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| Saturday, 24 April 2004 |
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Lanka should stick to seven batsmen - Atapattu Saadi Thawfeeq reporting from Zimbabwe Captain Marvan Atapattu said that Sri Lanka should in future stick to playing seven batsmen in one-day internationals after his team had beaten a weak Zimbabwe side by nine wickets to take a 2-0 lead in the five-match series at Queens Sports Club here yesterday. "Looking at the winning combinations we had in the past it has always been seven batsmen that we have gone with. For some reason we changed from that policy a little bit and in recent times gone with two spinners and three fast bowlers on certain wickets," said Atapattu. "In world cricket today most of the teams play with seven batsmen. An extra batsman gives that little bit of confidence to the batting. Playing seven batsmen is not going to affect us because we are anyway going to cover the fifth bowler's ten overs with the half bowlers we have," he said. Atapattu was defending the selection of hard-hitting right-hander Saman Jayantha at the expense of a bowler for the second one-day international. Jayantha replaced young fast bowler Nuwan Kulasekara although thoughts were pretty strong on playing fast bowler Dilhara Fernando. "Dilhara is fit and we want him in the squad. But at the same time we want to get into a position we want to be in before trying out players," said Atapattu. "We are only a win away from clinching the series. If it is possible we will try to give everyone a chance in the remaining two games," he said. Atapattu praised the batting of Jayantha who outscored his more illustrious partner Sanath Jayasuriya in an opening partnership of 84. Jayasuriya made 31 before miscuing a ball to mid-off. But Jayantha playing in only his third one-day international went onto complete his maiden fifty to remain unbeaten on 74 scored off 64 balls. "I couldn't have asked anything more from Saman. This is the first time he opened and he scored faster than Sanath. He is that kind of batsman and takes very little risk. We are more than happy to see someone scoring runs," said Atapattu. He also extolled Jayasuriya for becoming the highest run-getter for Sri Lanka in one-day internationals. The champion batsman who has served Sri Lanka cricket for nearly 15 years surpassed Aravinda de Silva's record one-day aggregate of 9284 runs during his innings of 31. "It is nice to have a guy like Sanath in the side. He contributes in all three aspects of the game. He has been a great ambassador. Some people recognize our country by Sanath's batting exploits. As captain what can't you expect from a guy like him. I will be happy to have a guy like him in my team," said Atapattu. Vaas looks for 300th wicket at Harare The fact that Chaminda Vaas and Muttiah Muralitharan took the majority of wickets once again emphasized how much Sri Lanka relied on these two for success. Vaas creamed off the top order taking four for 38 and Muralitharan the bottom half finishing with four for 32. Vaas who took the man-of-the-match award seems to have a liking for the Zimbabwean batting having demolished them for a lowly 38 runs with world record figures of eight for 19 including a hat-trick at the SSC four years ago. "I have nothing in particular against Zimbabwe it is just that I want try to do my best against any opposition I come across," said Vaas after his superb bowling effort. "Whatever opposition I get I have to bowl well. I got my rhythm right from the first game and I am happy the way I am bowling," he said. "I was encouraged by some grass on the pitch. You don't get this kind of wickets in the sub continent. I tried to bend my back a little bit more to get some extra pace out of it and succeeded. Most of the wickets I got by seaming the ball and by hitting the deck," Vaas said. The 30-year-old left-armer is just three wickets shy of joining the exclusive club of bowlers who had taken 300 wickets in one-day internationals. "I am looking forward to getting it in Harare. Getting 300 wickets has been my first target in one-day cricket," said Vaas whose present tally stands at 297 from 234 matches. 'We are doing our best' Zimbabwe coach Geoff Marsh said that his team did not put enough runs on the board to stretch Sri Lanka as they did in the first match. "To score 136 and expect to bowl Sri Lanka out on a beautiful batting wicket it's not going to happen. When you are playing against the best in the world you have got to put up a good fight. You need competition and we have got to play a lot better than we did today," said Marsh. "One of the things with the present group of players is that there's been some good positives coming out. The batting of Taibu and the bowling (Tinashe) Panyangara, although he went for a lot he learnt something that he cannot afford to bowl to players like Jayasuriya with width," he said. "In the first game we dropped a lot of catches. You cannot afford to drop catches off players like (Kumar) Sangakkara, a lovely player in great form. You've got to take the chances and we didn't; do it in the first game. Today we didn't put enough runs on the board. We are doing the best we possibly can," Marsh said. |
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