Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews on Sunday said that the visitors will have to be on their toes against the hosts in the three-match one-day international series that begins today at Mirpur.
Bangladesh came close to pulling off wins in the just-concluded two-match Twenty20 internationals only to be denied in the final delivery of both the games and Mathews stressed the importance of maintaining their intensity in order to prevail in the one-day series.
‘Well, I thought it was a hard-fought couple of wins for us. It wasn’t easy at all for us, as I said, [Bangladesh] are going to come hard at us. They are going to be very strong in the ODIs. We hope the guys will keep the momentum and go forward in the ODIs,’ Mathews told the media at Mirpur.
‘We know that they are a young team and fighting unit. They don’t give up at any stage. They almost defended 120 in the last game. We can’t go off-guard at any given time and perform to our abilities,’ said the 26-year old skipper.
The all-rounder ruled out any experiments in the playing eleven after some overnight drizzle and weather forecasts by the meteorological office predicted that there is the likelihood of rain over the next couple of days.
The pitches at Mirpur Sher-e-Bangla National Stadium tend to be less-favourable for the spinners in overcast conditions.
‘Hopefully the weather stays away and we get a good game in our hands,’ said Mathews.
‘We are not looking at experiments. We just want to go out there, enjoy our cricket [and] play the best eleven. As of now we are not planning on experimenting.
‘Well yeah, we have got to see how the weather plays [today] as well. We can’t name the final eleven [before that]. It’s pretty straight forward. There won’t be too many changes. We still believe in our best eleven, regardless of the weather we will go with our best eleven,’ he said.
Mathews refused to give out the composition of his team, keeping his cards close to his chest before going on to say that everyone had chances of making the side for today’s game.
‘Obviously we have got two seniors in the team,’ he said, referring to veteran cricketers Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan.
‘We don’t have Mahela, he has been rested. We got a few exciting players who played in the Pakistan series as well. We got [Ashan] Priyanjan, Kithu [Vithanage], Angelo Perera. We still haven’t decided on the composition. They have all got the talent to play in the eleven,’ concluded Mathews.
Sri Lanka will be looking to improve their fortunes from the last time they played a bilateral one-day series, against Pakistan in the United Arab Emirates. The Lankans lost the five-match one-day series 2-3.
The second and third ODIs are scheduled to be held at Mirpur on Thursday and Saturday respectively.
-With New Age input
