Bayliss happy with Murali’s performance

Chris DAMBARAGE

Sri Lanka coach Travor Bayliss praised his key bowler Muttiah Muralitharan and the rest of the team for a magnificent performance and helping the side to stage a great comeback on the second day of the first Test match against the touring England team continued at the Asgiriya Stadium in Kandy yesterday.

England finished the day on 186 for 6 in their first innings in reply to Sri Lanka’s modest 188 runs. Bayliss said that the Lankans had a pretty ordinary day on Saturday but they have really made amends with some fantastic bowling spearheaded by spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan.

Bayliss noted that his team is now right back in the game having exposed the England tailenders and will be hoping to knock off the last four wickets quite quickly.

Even then Bayliss was disappointed with the manner Sri Lanka batted in their first innings especially having elected to bat first on a good batting track.

He said that the main reason is because there are a couple of players in the team who are still struggling to find the difference between first class cricket and Test cricket. Bayliss believes that they could learn a lot in this aspect by playing against some of the top teams like Australia and England.

He said that Muralitharan fully deserves the World record but was disappointed that he will need to wait for another day to achieve his goal. He felt that the wicket will help the spinners a lot during the next three days where Muralitharan could come into effect when England will probably be chasing a total like 250 plus.

Bayliss was also worried about the Sri Lankan batsmen’s continuous failure in the first innings which was also the main cause for their two recent defeats against Australia.

He said that this is something the batsmen need to concentrate and try to avoid repeating it in the next two Test matches in Colombo and Galle. ASGIRIYA, Kandy.