http://www.senore.com/Cricket/DPMD-Jayawardene-c1397 – Cricket News Update
http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-Ali-Khan-c89356 Afridi, and admitted that the home team’s batsmen failed to play him properly in the second of the two-match T20 series at Hambantota.
The visitors lost the first match of the tour as their batting miserably failed to deliver the goods. However, Afridi performed out of his skin with both bat and ball in the second match to help his team square the series.
At one stage in the second encounter, Pakistan had lost four wickets for merely 41 runs in the 11th over, before http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shoaib-Malik-c90088 and Boom Boom constructed a match-winning partnership. The latter scored 52 runs off only 33 balls, in which he smashed
five boundaries and a six.
In Sri Lanka’s innings, the former Pakistan captain showed his skills with the ball and picked up two vital wickets after giving away just 17 runs in his quota of four overs.
The home team’s skipper believes that Afridi is one of the best T20 cricketers in the world at the moment, who can easily change the course of a match any time. Jayawardene confessed that his inexperienced batsmen failed to read Afridi's variations.
"http://www.senore.com/Cricket/Shahid-c89347 is one of those top class performers in T20 cricket and he can change games single-handedly. He took control of the innings and with the ball he picked up a couple of wickets as well. We should have probably played him with more sense. He is the
guy who took the game away from us," the Sri Lankan skipper expressed.
Jayawardene did not play in the second match of the series in order to give chances to the youngsters, as he thinks that this is a step towards preparing for the http://www.senore.com/Cricket/ICC-World-Cup-2011-c100625 World T20 2012.
The batsman added, “We have given some players opportunities and some of them really performed well. We can move forward thinking that we can go for the World T20 with more options."
The five-match One Day International series between the two countries is going to start from June 7th, 2012 at Pallekele. If Sri Lanka has a chance in the upcoming series, they need to play Afridi better.
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