NEW DELHI, June 17
Sri Lanka arrived in the USA roughly 10 days before their first match of the T20 World Cup 2024, playing two warm-up games against Netherlands and Ireland. But they still didn’t adjust quickly enough to the surfaces the USA threw at them, felt captain Wanindu Hasaranga.
Their campaign was essentially wrecked by two batting collapses – they were bowled out for 77 against South Africa in New York, before Bangladesh kept them to 124 for 9 in Dallas.
They won their last game against Netherlands by 83 runs, but had already been ruled out of Super-Eight contention by that stage after their match against Nepal was washed out.
There has been talk of the inconveniences Sri Lanka faced at this World Cup, particularly around the amount of travel that they had had to do. But Hasaranga said the team itself was chiefly responsible for the early exit. “When you lose a match you can blame pitches and other things, but as professional cricketers, that’s not a good thing,” he said. “Even the other team has to play on the same pitch, and it’s our job to change the way we play. We’re representing a country and have to take that responsibility.
“We didn’t make those changes and adapt, and that was our main flaw.” Sri Lanka had in fact had had a small training camp in North Carolina before their warm-up matches, but that turned out to be of limited assistance, according to Hasaranga.
“We have to thank the cricket board for bringing us here 10 days early and organising a training camp for us,” he said. “That was a big thing. It was important to get used to conditions, weather, and the time zone here.
“But then when we moved from one region in the USA to another, the pitches were not the same. Even though in some countries pitches are more similar from place to place, that’s not the case in the USA. “We adjusted as well as we could, but we unfortunately got New York for the first match, and it didn’t go well for us. In the second match we went to Dallas and didn’t adjust well to that pitch. As a team and as a captain we have to take the responsibility for that.”
