Sri Lanka’s World Cup semi-final hopes fade away

Rex Clementine
in Bombay

After a clinical performance against defending champions England, Sri Lanka’s World Cup campaign was back on track, but Monday’s loss to Afghanistan in Pune has brought it back to square one.

When Sri Lanka travelled to Pune, they had four games remaining and had to win at least three of those to have any chance of progressing to the knockout stage of the competition.

Now that they lost to Afghanistan, their chances of making it to the semi-finals are slim as they have got to win the remaining three games and hope the results of other games too go in their favour.

Even if other results go in their favour, it is hard to think that Sri Lanka will overcome India, who have been unbeaten in this competition.

India have been rarely tested in this tournament and their bowling attack has posed many challenges to the opposition.

Sri Lanka’s top order in this tournament has done fairly well with Pathum Nissanka, Kusal Mendis and Sadeera Samarawickrama amidst runs. It is the middle order that has been a flop with Charith Asalanka managing just one half-century in six games and Dhananjaya de Silva not been able to reach 50 even once.

If the top order failed to deliver, middle and lower middle order are unable to handle the pressure and that has been a huge drawback in this competition.

Now that hope of making it to the semi-finals has slipped away, Sri Lanka’s next aim should be to ensure that they do not get thrown out of the Champions Trophy to be played in 2025.

The two bottom placed teams in this tournament will not take part in Champions Trophy that will be hosted by Pakistan in two years’ time.

The Indian team had a training session yesterday at the Wankhede Stadium where Thursday’s clash against Sri Lanka will take place.

Sri Lanka were travelling to Bombay from Pune yesterday and did not train. They are expected to conduct a training session today at Wankhede.

Wankhede was also the venue for the epic 2011 World Cup final between Sri Lanka and India which the hosts won.

Since then, Sri Lanka have played just two games here – two T-20s both of which they lost to India. The most recent game was early this year when they went down to India by two runs.