Sri Lanka to Pick Seperate Squad for T-20s says Chief Selector

Following Sri Lanka’s defeat in the World Twenty20 final against West Indies the national selection committee are planning to streamline the selection of teams and have a separate squad for Twenty20 cricket.The changes are most likely to come soon in the one-off T20 international against New Zealand scheduled to be played at Pallekele on October 30.


With the resignation of Mahela Jayawardene from the T20 captaincy at the end of the World T20 final, his deputy Angelo Mathews is expected to take over the reins for the game against New Zealand.“We will have to go with Mathews for the moment but we will assess the captaincy. The team should be captained by a player who has a permanent place in the side,” said chairman of selectors De Mel. 

“We will pick a young side with players who can make a clean strike of the ball,” he said.Sri Lanka batsmen were greatly exposed in the final the way the West Indies batsmen went about hitting sixes and clearing the boundary almost at will to reach a respectable total of 137 for six after scoring just 32 runs in the first ten overs. They hit a total of seven sixes in the final.

When it was Sri Lanka’s turn to bat none of their front line batsmen were able to clear the boundary and the only six that was hit came from tailender Nuwan Kulasakara.“We really have to assess the situation and start building a team of T20 cricketers for the next World T20 in Bangladesh in 2014,” said De Mel.
“We need to find some strong hitters who can clear the boundary successfully. Players like Mahela Jayawardene and Angelo Mathews don’t have the power so they adopt different methods to score runs like the scoop and the reverse sweep. Even playing those strokes you need the strength to clear the fielders,” he said.

Mathews exposed his stumps and was bowled attempting to play the scoop shot against Darren Sammy and Jayawardene failed to clear the short third man fielder when he reverse swept Sunil Narine.De Mel said that Dilshan Munaweera was a player who could hit sixes and was discovered during the double wicket tournament.

“Chamara Kapugedera is another batsman who could easily clear the boundary but he has been under so much pressure from all quarters for failing to contribute big scores that he was eventually dropped,” De Mel said.Kapugedera hit 13 sixes in six matches for NCC in the Premier club T20 tournament and had a strike rate of 179.64.“We need to separate the Test and ODI players from the T20 players and pick a squad that will fulfill the requirements of T20 cricket,” De Mel said.

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