Lankan cricketers arrive in Perth exuding confidence

Face India in opener at the WACA tomorrow :

Elmo Rodrigopulle - reporting from Australia

The Sri Lankan cricketers who are determined to give a good account of themselves in the ongoing Commonwealth Bank Tri series which also features Australia and India arrived in Perth from Canberra exuding confidence. The team was quick to get to the nets and get a feel of the weather, which is a bit cooler here, considering that Perth is known to be a bit hotter this time of the year.

All members of the team are fit and well with no injuries to worry about and when selection time for the first game against India on Wednesday comes around, every player will have his hands up signifying his readiness to have a go.

Tough time

The selectors will have a tough time, but have the experience to pick the best team that will make a winning start and put Sri Lanka cricket back into the once famous winning street. The Australians brushed aside the Indians in an overs shortened game because of rain and if the manner in which they played is an indication and if the live up to that form would not be an easy nut to crack. The Australians put into bat were off to a shock start. But with debutant Mathew Wade who pushed aside Brad Haddin showing the way with a hard hit and stylish 67 from 69 balls the latter batsmen - Hussey brothers Michael and David contributing lavishly with 45 from 32 and 61 from 30 made a challenging 216 for 5 in 32 overs.

Early wickets

As for the Indian bowlers paceman Vinay Kumar gave them the all important early wickets that of David Warner and Ricky Ponting. But the other bowlers were not penetrative and the Aussie batsmen made merry. When India batted they lost Sachin Tendulkar who came in for Virender Sehwag for 2 and the loss of his master batsman seemed to have had a demoralizing effect and the rest of the batsmen could not make the big scores needed for victory. Paceman Clint McKay was the pick of the Australian bowlers with 4 for 20 in 4.4 which was a fantastic and match winning effort. He worked up a lot of pace and got the ball to climb off a good length and the Indian batsmen were lured to their destruction.

Ideal start

Australians were thus off to an ideal start and by obtaining the bonus point which should give them the confidence to keep marching on as the tri series gathers momentum.

After the game, player of the match Mathew Wade who won the same award in the First Twenty20 international against India said that he was not starting to think long term about cementing his place in the Australian team.

That would be a bad option for myself. I just want to do as well as I can in the three games. If I look too far ahead, you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s a pretty fickle game that we play.

Although he failed with the bat, former Aussie captain Ricky Ponting took two match winning catches to inspire the Aussie fielders. His catching of Tendulkar and Virat Kohli were great pieces of fielding.