Angelo Mathews wants his batsmen to improve against South Africa

Angelo Mathews wants his batsmen to improve against South Africa

Sri Lanka’s all-rounder Angelo Mathews believes his side needs to cross the ‘250’ mark in order to challenge the strong South African side, which has won the opening two One Day Internationals (ODIs) of the five-match series convincingly.

South Africa are hosting a complete series against the Lankan Lions and have already won the three-match Test series by 2-1. They will now look to be victorious in the limited-over leg.

However, Vice-captain Angelo Mathews said if they can just get over the five-runs-per-over mark, they could be in with a chance. "With two new balls, 250 plus is a very good score," he said. "We need to try and put up a 250-plus score
to give the bowlers a chance."

The Sri Lankan bowling has also been under the scanner since the retirement of legendary spinner Muttiah Muralitharan. Mathews has also been unable to bowl 10 overs in an innings because of an injury, but believes that he will be able to do it once
he regains fitness.

"I’ve just started bowling again and it’s going to take a while for me to bowl 10 overs in a match," he said. "I’m going to bowl in short spells, because in between games we haven’t got enough time to allow me to train myself to bowl more overs.
I will bowl six or seven overs per match, maximum, to give my body a chance to cope with the pressure and the workload."

The hosts will be without two of their best batsmen Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis, who will miss the third ODI due to the rotation policy. This will be an opportunity for for Tillakaratne Dilshan and his men to pressurise the opposition and
bounce back in the series.

However, the Proteas have some talented young batsmen like colin Ingram and Alviro Petersen, who can represent the national side in any format of the game. The latter of the two recently made his comeback to Test cricket and scored a century,
but he has yet not made a name in the 50-over format.

The third ODI of the series will be played on Tuesday, January 17, 2012.

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Posted by Waqar Masood on Jan 16 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry