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.

Upul Tharanga

3. Lack of partnerships

Sri Lanka were put in to chase in both the games, and while chasing you need to build effective partnerships. But that was another area where Sri Lanka were practically non-existent.

They had only one partnership over fifty in both the games combined – Dananjaya de Silva and Upul Tharanga added 54 runs for the second wicket against Afghanistan. They registered only three partnerships above the 30-run mark, which is a sorry statistic.

4. Run outs

In the must-win encounter against Afghanistan, Sri Lanka lost two wickets to run-outs just when things seemed to be going in their favor.

Upul Tharanga and Dananjaya de Silva added 54 runs for the second wicket and the latter departed due to poor communication between them. At one point, both batsmen were running towards the same end.

Captain Angelo Mathews and Shehan Jayasuriya had stabilized Sri Lanka’s chase for a while, adding 20 runs for the fourth wicket. But poor calling from Mathews left Jayasuriya stranded in the middle of the pitch, and he was run out by a big margin.

Mathews was also involved in a run-out in the first game against Bangladesh. Due to his slow calling, Dasun Shanaka was run-out by a long distance.

5. Ineffective death bowling

Sri Lanka bowled brilliantly upfront in both the games. However, in the last five overs they allowed their opposition to get to a competitive total.

In the first game, Bangladesh scored just 219 at the end of 45 overs. However, with a late assault they finished with 261 on the board – scoring 42 runs since the start of the 46th over.

In the second game, Afghanistan went from a par score of 208 at the 45-over mark to 249 at the end of their quota – adding 41 runs in the last five overs.