Rex Clementine in Dubai

Sri Lanka are enjoying a brilliant wave of success having won five games in a row now in the ICC T-20 World Cup. While their bowling has looked formidable, batting has been brittle and it needed a stunning unbeaten 80 from Charith Asalanka for them to overcome Bangladesh. Asalanka, a two time Schoolboy Cricketer of the Year and a former Sri Lanka Under-19 captain has been earmarked for great things and the first signs of a star in the making were on show on Sunday during his stunning knock.

The country is not short of cricketing talent. Kusal Mendis has been the brightest young talent to emerge in recent times but unfortunately young players lose track. Asalanka is someone who has got a good head above his shoulders and there are signs that he is a captain in the making.

“Very pleased that I was able to win a game for Sri Lanka and I am looking forward to win lot more. I was not in the best of form during the home South Africa series and missed the warm-up games here. I was able to mentally prepare for the game during that time and worked with the coaches a lot and there was lot of input from Mahela as well,” Asalanka told journalists.

Providing him good support was Bhanuka Rajapaksa with whom he added 86 runs for the fifth wicket after the top order had collapsed.

“We all know that Bhanuka is an attacking batsman. No matter what the situation of the game is, he will attack. There was a short boundary on one side of the wicket so we wanted to target that and it worked,” Asalanka explained.

“We had done a lot of analysis as to which bowler to target and stuff. The other thing is that in all venues one side of the boundary is short so there was no harm in taking on even their best bowler.”

Sri Lanka will take on Australia today in Dubai and Asalanka said that a lot of planning has gone in ahead of the game. “We have a plan for each of the 11 Australian players. We kept out one day and did the planning against them. Australia is completely different from Bangladesh. Their strength is pace. We have done a lot of training accordingly and looking forward to it,” Asalanka explained.