Lanka looking to salvage lost prestige

Chris Dhambarage reporting

Sri Lanka will be looking to salvage some of their lost pride when they take on England in the International Cricket Council ( ICC) Under 19 World Cup Play Off semifinal match to be played at the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia today (Wednesday).

The Lankans of course were eliminated from the Cup Championship after going down to New Zealand by 79 runs in a quarterfinal fixture worked off at this same venue on Monday. But now they have another chance to make an impact and also to improve on their rankings in this sixteen nation competition.

Sri Lanka coach Roger Wijesuriya emphasized the importance of this match because they have been given another chance to take back home something unlike in the previous tournaments. The team is determined to bounce back and make it to the Play Off final which will give them a great amount of satisfaction after several months of hard work and training.

But more importantly the team will be hoping not to fall into the same trap because they conceded too many runs to the Kiwis during the latter stages in their crucial quarterfinal fixture. Even then head coach Roger Wijesuriya said that a total of 213 runs was quite gettable but unfortunately the top order batsmen failed to built up any solid partnerships.

"Although they got 213 runs we could have saved at least another 20 runs because the fielding was not upto a standard. Still the total was reachable because when it comes to a quarterfinal we have to expect a total of something like that.

We got a good start but it did not really come out well because we could not get a good partnership going and lost wickets regularly due to some loose shots. The boys are disappointed because they were looking forward to playing in the semifinal of the Cup championship.

But that's cricket because you will not get anything in the easy way, you have to fight hard and you have to really earn it".

Sri Lanka also had the better of England twice during a home Tri Series which also featured Pakistan. The key batsmen for England will be Billy Godleman who scored an unbeaten 149 against Pakistan in youth one day international last year and Kent's Sam Northeast.

In the bowling department much will be expected from six foot eight inches tall Steven Finn who became the youngest player since Fred Titmus in 1949 to make his county debut for Middlesex at the age of just 16 years. The two teams have met each other on 25 occasions and Sri Lanka have won 16 of them losing just eight matches with one no result.