A gloomy end to Sri Lanka’s World Cup campaign

Rex Clementine in Miami

Sri Lanka crashed out of the ICC T-20 World Cup with a game to spare after their match against Nepal in Miami was washed out by rain. The former champions had made things difficult for themselves after losing back-to-back games against South Africa and Bangladesh, but still had an outside chance of making it to the second round depending on decisions of other games going in their favour. But after Tuesday’s washout, even if they win their next game against Netherlands they will be left with only three points and that’s not good enough to go through.

It rained the whole day in Miami on Tuesday. Although the rains cleared by 6:00 pm, there were hopes of a delayed start with overs shortened. The match officials did an inspection at 8:30pm local time and decided to abandon the game. There were two puddles in long off and long-on and playing the game would have been too risky. The ground staff did an excellent job to clear the water, but their effort wasn’t good enough.

The players left the ground half an hour after the match was abandoned and it started raining again.

Sri Lanka will now travel to St. Lucia where they will play their remaining group game against Netherlands later this week.

It’s been a disappointing campaign for Sri Lanka no doubt. The same team had beaten Afghanistan at home and Bangladesh away from home in T-20 series and there were high hopes of Sri Lanka doing well.

However, the team had little momentum during their campaign from the moment they won the toss against South Africa and decided to bat first on an unknown wicket. Sri Lanka were shot out for 77 in New York, their lowest total ever in T-20 cricket.

Sri Lanka were poor in handling game situations and playing under pressure as several batters perished trying to attack whereas picking up singles would have been the wiser choice on two paced tracks.

“It has been a disappointing campaign for us. Our batting didn’t click and although our bowlers and fielders fought hard, we didn’t simply have enough runs on the board to fight back,” spin bowler Maheesh Theekshana told journalists after the game was abandoned.

“We were poor in assessing the conditions. It’s been a tough campaign for us. I don’t think we deserve a place in the second round. We know we are out of the tournament but we have one more game and realistically we need to finish that game off in a good manner.”