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NDB Bank Cup 2020 being unveiled yesterday in the presence of West Indies Team Captain Kieran Pollard, SL ODI Team Captain Dimuth Karunarathne as NDB Chairman Kavan Ratnayake (left) and Group CEO Dimantha Seneviratne look on – Pic by Sameera Wijesinghe
By Madushka Balasuriya
As Sri Lanka and the West Indies prepare to square off in the first of three one-day internationals on Saturday, which will be followed by two T20Is next month, the series offers the chance for both sides to benchmark themselves ahead of the World T20 later this year.
For the West Indies, it’s an opportunity to see if they can build on their impressive showing in India this past December, when they pushed arguably the top limited overs team in the world right throughout the series, in the end coming away with narrow 2-1 losses in both the ODIs and T20Is.
For Sri Lanka, after a chastening T20I series loss in India and an underwhelming Test series win over Zimbabwe to kick start 2020, this series offers them a chance at testing themselves against quality opposition allied with the comfort afforded when playing on home soil.
“We’ve got some realistic goals that we want to achieve over the next couple of years, and this is the start for us,” stated Sri Lanka head coach Mickey Arthur at a media briefing yesterday, heralding the start of the series.
Arthur, who will be taking the reins of the ODI side for the first time since being hired as national coach, said he was particular keen to see how his players adapted to the newly allocated team roles given to them.
“We’re very realistic about where we are at the moment but we have some very good goals that we want to achieve over the next couple of years.
“We just want to keep getting better and better. Everybody has certainly been given very clear role definitions, so to see how the guys embrace those role definitions is going to be very, very interesting. Also we need to establish what’s going to be our best brand of cricket and how we’re going to go about that, and hope that we can get some results which will give the confidence in the brand of cricket we want to play over the next couple of years.”
As for West Indies head coach Phil Simmons, the tour is more about looking to carry on the progress that was so evident against India.
“For the last three months we’ve been trying to build both our white ball teams. We’re looking at improving. And [at the end of this tour] if we’ve gotten better than we were in India then we could be walking away with the series,” stated Simmons.
One of the main areas for improvement the team have been eyeing since that India tour has been in their bowling. While the West Indies batsmen have never been short of confidence, Simmons felt it was in the bowling department that impactful gains could be made.
“I think during the series we played well, but we just had to improve our bowling. We’ve been working hard on that, in terms of getting more wickets in the middle overs and things like that. I think we’ve improved and we’ll see what happens in this series.”
