Maheesh Theekshana has said that Sri Lanka didn’t play best cricket in the T20 World Cup 2024 campaign as they are on the brink of elimination without reaching the Super 8 stages. The former champions were grouped along with South Africa and Bangladesh in Group D and lost two both sides in must-win games. On June 12, they saw that their match against Nepal getting washed out without a ball being bowled.
Theekshana was honest with his assessment of the team and said that they didn’t bat well and there was a failure in assessing the conditions as well. The spinner said that the South Africa and Bangladesh performances showed that Sri Lanka didn’t deserve to get a Super 8 spot.
“Everything went wrong this year. We didn’t bat well and we didn’t assess the conditions really well and our plans, everything went wrong and I think as a team right now it’s not going to be easy for the next game but still I think when we look at the last two games that we played, we didn’t play well. We didn’t play the best cricket that we had. So, I think we didn’t earn the spot – the way we played in the first two games. I don’t think we earned the spot for the Super 8, but still we have one game left, so we’ll try to do our best,” said Theekshana.
Theekshana continued by saying they had high hopes for the tournament and they were in a good spot coming into the World Cup. However, the spinner said that the team made a lot of mistakes.
“Not at all. We had high hopes about this world cup. I am not satisfied with the performance of our team. We had a good mentality, bowlers were practised well, batsmen were also practised well in the last tournament. We were in a good position when we came to this tournament. I think we have done a lot of mistakes as a team, so we couldn’t enter the super eight,” said Theekshana.
Sri Lanka will play their final match against Netherlands on June 17.
