Playing too many limited-over games led to our downfall in the Colombo Test, says http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Graham-Xavier-Ford-c60657 – Cricket News Update
Graham Ford, Sri Lanka’s coach, is disappointed at his team’s batting performance in the recently-concluded Test series against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/New-Zealand-c754 at home and feels that excess of limited-over cricket led to his team’s downfall.
Having won the first Test of the series against the Kiwis at Galle, the Islanders succumbed under pressure at Colombo, losing the match by 167 runs. The home team’s batsmen struggled to deliver the goods on a flat batting track, getting
dismissed for merely 195 runs in the last innings of the match, allowing the visitors to square the series.
The mentor is not happy with the way his batsmen threw away their wickets and feels that playing too much limited-over sport earlier this year hampered their techniques. Ford is of the opinion that Test cricket is a completely different
form of the game as compared to T20s or ODIs, requiring more application and responsibility to be successful.
“Quite a number of our batsmen, although we got a few Test match specialists, have played a huge amount of T20 and ODI cricket in recent times and the Test match process hasn't really been in their minds,” Ford said.
The South African gives his batsmen the benefit of the doubt as they were tired after spending a lot of time in the field, with the Black Caps scoring a lot of runs in the fixture. Ford hopes for an improved performance by his side
in future.
“Also this last Test having had long hours on the field, the mind sometimes plays a few tricks and you are not quite as mentally tough as you should be for Test match cricket. Hopefully we were able to learn from all of that and really
start to gear ourselves for much bigger scores.”
Sri Lanka’s next assignment in international cricket is the series against http://www.senore.com/Cricket/DPMD-Jayawardene-c1397 and company will play
a 3-day warm-up match against Cricket Australia’s Chairman XI, which starts on Thursday at Canberra. The Lankans will have to raise their game to give a tough time to Michael Clarke’s men.
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