Sri Lanka captain Upul Tharanga ahead of the second match today at Abu Dhabi accepted that the team is one batsman short for the five match ODI series.
“Prior to the series what we wanted to do was to stick to six batters. We retained four seamers and we wanted Lakmal and Nuwan Pradeep. We knew that they will struggle to play all five games as both played test matches as well. That is the reason that we retained four fast bowlers in the squad and ended up having only five batsmen” revealed Tharanga ahead of second ODI.
“This series when it started we spoke about batting because batting has let us down over the last few series. We tried to tell the players what is their role. All the players are aware of their roles. I hope from today onwards we will come up with good batting efforts” he added.
In the first ODI at Dubai, Milinda Siriwardena came to bat at number six and got out for a duck. Sri Lanka played with Six batsmen, one allrounder and four specialist bowlers in the match.
The match witnessed shuffle in the batting order as well, with Dinesh Chandimal came to bat at number three, while Young Kusal Mendis pushed back to number five.
