Head coach Jayasuriya blames side’s poor shot selection in harrowing innings defeat against Australia at Galle.
Head coach Jayasuriya believes Australia’s batters were at home on Sri Lanka tracks and his batters weren’t.
“There was a serious problem with shot selections, as well as with handling situations,” Jayasuriya said. “I don’t think certain players have handled situations well. They’re experienced players, and they have to be more mature.
“These players have played a lot of cricket and should know how to play. I’ve talked to them about this. But we’ve got to talk to them in detail about this now. Also, we cannot blame the wicket. Because we saw how the wicket behaved. This was a very good wicket. For a long time, we haven’t seen such a good wicket in Galle, on the third and fourth days.”
According to Jayasuriya, the issue is that batters aren’t turning their starts into significant runs. Six hitters faced 50 balls or more in Australia’s opening innings in the first Test match in Galle. Only Dinesh Chandimal faced more than 50 balls in Sri Lanka’s opening innings.
“The biggest problem is the batters who are taking a start but are not going to play a long innings,” Jayasuriya said. “This is something I always mutter. We saw [Usman] Khawaja, [Steven] Smith and [Josh] Inglis, all three of them took a good start and they converted them to big hundreds. This conversion must be there. We’re not consistent in that. Our players should know that these are our conditions and we must make use of these conditions. There were lots of opportunities but we didn’t make use of them.”
Although Sri Lankan spinners at the time believed their slower speed was more appropriate for this surface, Australia’s spinners did have a tendency to bowl more quickly.
“They were bowling a little faster than us, but we were thinking that our pace was the best. That’s what we’ve been doing. The wicket was on the slower side and we were trying to bowl a little faster, but we ended up bowling as we usually do here.
“After the third or fourth day, we saw the normal Galle wicket. What the Australia spinners did was bowl a little faster than us. That’s normally what they’re doing.
“We’re used to bowling at a slower pace, but it didn’t work in this match. We need to discuss all that also.”