by Rex Clementine  

Former captain Angelo Mathews made a grand return to Sri Lanka’s T-20 side scripting a nail-biting three wicket win over Zimbabwe in a last ball thriller at RPS on Sunday night.

Playing his fist T-20 International in almost three years, Mathews opened bowling and then chasing a target of 144, dug the side out of trouble after being 52 for four. The 36-year-old veteran top scored with 46 runs and was dismissed in the last over with Sri Lanka six runs away from victory.

Mathews had been given the cold shoulder from T-20 cricket since March 2021 as the previous selection panel launched their controversial youth policy. Several seniors threw in the towel but Mathews kept fighting and was called up for last year’s 50 over World Cup as a last minute injury replacement.

With a change of selection panel now Mathews is very much in the plans for this year’s T-20 World Cup in the United States and the Caribbean.

“I had decent outings in LPL and it was strange to miss out for so long. I guess people were working with agendas and obviously it’s beyond my control. All what I had to do was to keep performing. When the new selectors came in, they said they had me in mind for T-20 cricket and asked me whether I could contribute as a bowler as well and I was pretty happy to do that,” Mathews told journalists after his match winning performance.

“You would have seen the things that happened in the past few years. If you don’t have underhanded goals, and you’re working only towards the success of the team, whether you are a player or a selector, the team does well. If you’ve got your own goals, that’s when there are problems,” Mathews explained.

One of the outcomes of the disastrous youth policy was Sri Lanka were knocked out of the Champions Trophy. SLC is set to lose US$ 500,000 as participating fee. This will be the first ICC event that the national cricket team missed out.

“If you look at where the team has fallen to, we should all take responsibility. We should now work on how to climb out of that. Our immediate target is the T20 World Cup. We can’t control things like missing out on the Champions Trophy anymore. What’s in front of us is the T20 tournament. We have to prepare a good team for that and get back to our glory days.”

Mathews appreciated the change of policies under the new set of selectors and was confident that Sri Lanka would be able to turn things around.

“The new selectors don’t really have an agenda. They are players who have played in the last few years. They know plenty about the players, and from what I can see they talk to everyone and communicate very well. Even Sanath Jayasuriya is working hard from morning at RPS. I think we’ll be able to turn this into a good team. Today our fielding was very good. The coaches, captain and seniors have to create an environment for everyone to play without fear. Everyone gets criticised, but the environment within the team is important. If we look after that then we can make a big change.”

The win helped Sri Lanka to maintain their unbeaten run against Zimbabwe in T-20 Internationals. At one stage though it looked a lost cause before Mathews and Dasun Shanaka made a late recovery.

“I talked to Dasun about how if one of us gets out it will be really difficult. We thought it would be better if we batted until the 16th or 17th over, and keep the required rate at an achievable level – around 10 runs an over. In the end we had to go after their best bowlers as well. We took some calculated risks. Dasun played a good innings, and the person who played the most important innings was Dushmantha Chameera who got six off the last two balls, or else everything else we did would have been meaningless.”