England elect to bat against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Sri-Lanka-c758 – ICC World Cup 2011 Quarter Final
England won the toss and chose to bat in a quarter-final match of the ICC World Cup 2011 against Sri Lanka, at the R Premadasa Stadium, Colombo in Sri Lanka. The winner of the match will go onto play http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 in the first semi-final of the tournament
on Tuesday 29th http://www.senore.com/Cricket/March-c74391.
The wicket at Colombo was a dry one and it was expected to slow down during the course of the match. This forced the English captain, Andrew Strauss, to bat first after he predicted the pitch to be very good for batting.
On the other hand, Sri Lanka captain Kumar Sangakkara wasn’t bothered about the toss and he said, “It's 50-50 on the toss, but that doesn't mean we will roll over and die.”
There were no changes made to the England 11, which won the last game against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/West-Indies-c760. However, the batting order was shuffled as Ian Bell replaced Matt Prior at the top of the order.
The wicketkeeper batsman has struggled to score runs for his team in the recent past and he was demoted to bat in the lower middle-order during the World Cup. Star batsman Kevin Pietersen replaced Prior as an opener, but the flamboyant batsman sustained
an injury and was ruled out of the mega event.
This forced the English management to promote Prior back as an opener. However, the poor run of form of the keeper batsman forced yet another change in the batting order for today’s match.
On the other hand, the hosts have made one change to their team today. They have opted for a spin attack, as they brought in left-arm spinner Rangana Herath in place of medium pacer Nuwan Kulasekara.
This leaves Sri Lanka with only two seamers in the team, Lasith Malinga and all-rounder, Angelo Mathews. The team will try and exert pressure on the visitors with their quality spinners like http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Ajantha-c42419 Mendis.
A similar ploy was used by New Zealand in their quarter-final match against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/South-Africa-c757. The Kiwi team opted for three specialist spinners, which paid off for them in the match, as they upset the mighty Proteas to qualify for the next round.
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