The national cricket team conducted a lengthy training session here at the ICC Cricket Academy yesterday afternoon and Batting Coach Hashan Thilakaratne said that the team is ready for the pink ball challenge. The second Test between Sri Lanka and Pakistan here in Dubai will be the tourists’, first ever day-night Test match.
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Sri Lanka’s last domestic tournament was played with pink balls, but the players are yet to experience how the ball behaves under lights.
“It’s something new for us. We had some training sessions in Colombo using the pink ball under lights before we left and we have some idea how the ball moves about. Everyone in the side is ready for the challenge,” Hashan told journalists at the training facility adjoining to the ICC headquarters.
The facility put up by the ICC has two ovals, several side nets with bowling machines and indoor nets making it a state of the art facility seen nowhere else in the world. Sri Lanka’s players were seen making maximum use of those facilities.
Explaining how different the pink ball to red ball, Thilakaratne said, “It depends on the condition. For example in Colombo, it moved a bit. Here we have to wait and see. We watched some tapes of the Day-Night match between Pakistan and West Indies last year and the ball didn’t move much on that occasion. It was a good batting track.”
Tillakaratne, the former Test captain was happy with the effort of wicketkeeper batsman Niroshan Dickwella, who was heavily criticized for throwing away his wicket during the Indian series. Dickwella went onto post a career best 83 runs in the first innings and then came up with a valuable 40 runs not out in the second essay that enabled Sri Lanka to set Pakistan a target of 136.
ශ්රී ලංකා පිතිකරණ පුහුණුකරුගේ නිවුන් පුතුන් පන්දුයවන්නන් වූ හැටි
“තිලකරත්න” යන නාමය ශ්රී ලංකාවේ ක්රිකට් ක්ෂේත්රය බැබළවූ නාමයකි. එය ඉදිරියට ගෙනයන නිවුන් සොයුරන් දෙදෙනෙක් ThePapare.com හමුවේ කතාබහක යෙදුණේ…
“Very pleasing to see someone adapting to the conditions so well and he will be a big asset for us. He has improved his batting zone well. He is very talented and skillful and we don’t want to change his game but the first 50 balls are going to be very important and after that it is up to him to play his shots,” Tillakaratne added.
Tillakaratne was also pleased with the approach to the batting as a team following a series of low scores in the home series against India. Sri Lanka batted for over 155 overs and their total of 419 put pressure on Pakistan, who were batting last.
“We had a good batting plan and all batsmen batted according to our batting plan. There is no guarantee when you go out to bat that all the batsmen can get a hundred or a fifty. Partnerships that we were able to get were very good. Nice to see Chandimal getting a big score and Dimuth making 93 while others like Dilruwan and Dickwella chipping in.”
Sri Lanka’s batting revolved around Dinesh Chandimal, whose epic 155 not out lasted for more than nine hours. “It is very pleasing to see the skipper showing the other players how to get a big score and he has been working very hard last few weeks,” Tillakaratne further said.
Top order batsman Kusal Mendis couldn’t make an impact in the first Test and Tillakaratne said that he was working with the batsman on certain areas.
“He is immensely talented. He scored a hundred against India and he will get better. We are working on his back foot play and leg side play and he is a very keen student.”
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s leading batsman Azhar Ali has promised to bounce back in the second Test after losing the first Test by 21 runs. Following the retirements of Misbah-ul-Haq and Younsi Khan, Azhar is Pakistan’s most experienced batsman and he went onto complete 5000 Test runs in the first innings.
“We have lessons to learn from that experience. Had someone batted for long enough in the first innings, we would have ended up getting a bigger lead. Had we done that, things would have been different. The biggest lesson that we have learnt is that when we have things under control, we should make use of them to the maximum,” Azhar told journalists.
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