5 reasons why Sri Lanka will be stronger in the T20I against India

#2 The format allows batsmen to express themselves more freely

Perera needs to unleash his inner T20 beast

After being part of the test and ODI teams that lost badly to India, the likes of Dickwella, Tharanga and Mathews would want to forget those results and come out in the T20I and express themselves freely.

They are the core of this Lankan batting line up and in the ODIs, each one of them has impressed in patches but they were not able to sustain their good work long enough for their team to reach winning positions.

Among the biggest problems facing them was that they just couldn’t rotate the strike too often, thus building up pressure which eventually led to their demise. The middle-overs in the ODIs was where the innings collapsed due to slow scoring rate and quick fall of wickets.

Since this is a T20, these batsmen would go in with a freer mindset, not bothering too much on rotating the strike and building a big partnership. They might look to get in and then just start attacking.

Someone like a Dickwella would surely be given the license to attack from ball one as if he stays more than 10 overs, then there is a good possibility of a big score been put up which is what his team would want from him.

All-rounders like Siriwardana, Perera, Prasanna and Shanaka can go out and play the role of pinch-hitters as the pitches generally tend to favour batsmen in the T20s allowing these players to probably get away with their inconsistency.