Asia Cup 2018: 5 things that went wrong for Sri Lanka
With dismal performances in both the games against Bangladesh and Afghanistan in the ongoing Asia Cup 2018, Sri Lanka have already been knocked out of the tournament. This comes as a shocker as their batting unit failed miserably and did not even get to 160 runs in either of the two games.
Let us look at the five things that went wrong for Sri Lanka in this tournament.
1. Failures at the top
While chasing any total, a good opening stand helps the middle order of the batting line up play their natural game without any pressure. However, the Sri Lankan openers failed to provide a good platform in the tournament.
Kusal Mendis and Upul Tharanga opened the batting in both the games. Although Tharanga managed to score some runs, his partner Kusal bagged a duck both times he came out to bat.
Sri Lanka’s opening partnership against Bangladesh was 22 runs while it was naught against Afghanistan.
2. Missed chances
Sri Lanka dropped three catches in their first game against Bangladesh, which helped the latter team post a respectable total on the board. Mohammad Mithun was dropped on 1 (by Angelo Mathews) while Mushfiqur Rahim was dropped on 10 (by Dilruwan Perera) and on 85 by Dananjaya de Silva. Mithun scored 63 runs while Mushfiqur Rahim scored 144.
Against Afghanistan, Dasun Shanaka dropped Rahmat Shah on 56 off Lasith Malinga’s bowling. Shah scored 72 runs which earned him the ‘Player of the Match’ award.
Apart from these dropped catches, there were countless instances of sloppy fielding by the Lankans in both the games which allowed the opposition to get some easy runs.