Over the last few years, the Sri Lankan team isn’t as strong, like it used to be during the era of Muralitharan, Jayawardene and Sangakkara, and yet the fans back home expect a lot from the team. The T20 World Cup 2024 was no different, but the Wanindu Hasaranga-led team failed to progress to the Super 8 of the competition. It’s a fair result for a team that was out of form, but no one really is castigating them.
Angelo Mathews Apologises
On the flipside, all-rounder Angelo Mathews admitted the mistakes that the Sri Lankan cricket team made on the park, and also that, they’ve let the entire nation down. In the T20 World Cup, they lost big to South Africa, and then to Bangladesh also, that hurt their chances. But luckily enough, the team did not pass the buck for the failure.
“I think first of all we’ve let the entire nation down and we are really sorry because we’ve also let ourselves down,” said former skipper Mathews. We never expected this. We came across a lot of challenges but those are not something to sort of worry about, but it’s unfortunate that we didn’t make the second round.”
“We can’t take any given team lightly. It’s unfortunate that our Nepal game was washed out but it is what it is,” he said. “We have just one more game in the tournament, and we’ll play for our pride. We haven’t done justice to ourselves, especially the way we played in the first two games.
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Pakistan Cricket Team Should Learn from Sri Lanka
Even Pakistan has been eliminated from the T20 World Cup early in the first round, but their attitude has been completely different. Almost all the former cricketers have spoken of the rift between Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi and Mohammad Rizwan, and unity was clearly missing.
The experts heavily criticised the team even when they had not started the tournament, let alone when they’re out now. With Pakistan cricket team yet to play their last match vs Ireland on June 16, there are already calls for changing the setup completely. That just shows, that Pakistan cricket is in shambles right now, and there is no clear recovery path currently.
