Sri Lanka needs to be in top 4 in shorter formats: Dimuth Karunaratne

Sri Lanka needs to be in top 4 in shorter formats: Dimuth Karunaratne
Sri Lanka needs to be in top 4 in shorter formats: Dimuth Karunaratne

Dimuth Karunaratne, the skipper of Sri Lanka cricket team, thinks that Sri Lanka needs to work hard in order to appear in the top 4 ICC rankings for ODI and T20.

The captain wants to see his side in the top 4 among the shortest formats of the game. Performance of Sri Lanka Cricket team has not been exceptional in the recent years. Including World Cup, they have been miserably awkward with horrendous pieces of deliverance and barely managed to win across all formats of the game.

The reason behind their consecutive defeats might be changing captains so often so they could not settle and team got disrupt. This affected the ranking of the team as well.

The journey in the ICC World Cup 2019 also was not sound enough to be appreciated. They began with two consecutive losses in the warm-up matches against South Africa and Australia respectively. When the tournament matches began, out of nine matches they got indulged in, they managed to win three as the two matches got abandoned due to England’s cloud burst.

Where they rank fifth across the red ball cricket format, they rank 7th and 8th in T20I and ODIs respectively. The skipper Karunaratne thinks Sri Lanka shall appear in top four in ODIs and T20Is.

Dimuth Karunaratne has applauded Mickey Arthur, who was the coach of Pakistan and retired in 2019, with praises and said that MIckey has a vast experience in the field and the Island country is looking forward to settle under his coaching.

“Mickey is a no-nonsense cool bloke with loads of experience to back him and his brand. At the international level planning and role clarity is a norm. What is very important is the belief he has instilled among us in his own and subtle way.”

It sure helped and the results always speak for itself,” Karunaratne was quoted as saying to Sri Lanka Cricket in a Q&A session on their official website cricket.lk.

“Rankings is the key word. I’d say Sri Lanka needs to be in the top four of not just ODI cricket, but Test cricket as well. That would indirectly mean semi-finalists to say the least and you are perhaps two games away from the plum. There onwards, it’s anybody’s guess and if you do well on your day you could end up being World champs,” he added.

Also, see:

South Africa tour of Sri Lanka postponed amid COVID-19 crisis

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