Confident Lakans meet Namibia today

Chris Dhambarage reporting

Sri Lanka look set to notch up their second successive victory when they confront Namibia in their International Cricket Council (ICC) Under 19 Youth World Cup Group C fixture at the Penang Sports Club ground in Malaysia today.

The Lankans are in a confident mood following their impressive performance against Nepal where they cruised to an easy 61 run victory at the same venue on Monday.

They are now just one match away from earning a place in the final round along with the former two time champions Australia.

Even then Sri Lanka coach Roger Wijesuriya is expecting an improved performance from his top order batsmen following a pretty ordinary effort in the game against Nepal.

The Lankans however recovered through their middle order batting to post a competitive total of 236 for 9 and then bundled out their opponents for 175 runs.

Sri Lanka is likely to miss the services of regular opening batsman Dilshan Munaweera who is yet recover the from the finger injury.

The dashing opener has been a consistent run getter for his team during the home Tri Series against Pakistan and England as well as in the warm up matches played in Kuala Lumpur.

As a result Lahiru Thirimanne was promoted to open the batting but managed just 17 runs from 29 deliveries.

In fact Sri Lanka's top three batsmen contributed only 21 runs between them with Dinesh Chandimal and Kusal Janitha Perera also failing to make an impact.

Sri Lanka also received a tremendous boost with the arrival of consultant batting coach Aravinda de Silva who has played a major role in the recent past to improve the technique and the skills of the batsmen.

Namibia of course are unlikely to offer any resistance to the Lankans who are determined to improve their net run rate by piling up a huge total.

At the moment they have a healthy net run rate of + 1.220. Australia also had some good batting practices in the match against Namibia where they piled up a massive 312 from their 48 overs.

The teams:

Sri Lanka (from): Ashan Subasinghe (captain), Sachith Pathirana, Thisara Perera, Roshane Silva, Lahiru Thirimanne, Dinesh Chandimal, Dilshan Munaweera, Imesh Udayanga, Navin Kavikara, Denuwan Fernando, Ishan Jayaratne, Angelo Perera, Chathura Peiris, Umesh Karunarathna and Kusal Perera.

Namibia (from): Dawid Botha (captain), Claude Bouwer, Gert Coetzee, Morne Engelbrecht, Tiaan Louw, Elandre Oosthuizen, Bernard Scholtz, Sean Silver, Ewald Steenkamp (wk), Keady Strauss, Louis van der Westhuizen, Martin van Niekerk, Ashley van Rooi, Raymond van Schoor, Helao Ya France.