\u201cLasith Malinga will be our trump card against India in the Champions Trophy semi-fnal,\u201d says Sri Lankan skipper Angelo Mathews. He knows one thing really well, that his team requires some great deal of hard work to overpower the Indian team in this knock-out contest. He hopes that they will manage to pulls a bunny out of the hat, especially Malinga who is their main strike bowler.<\/p>\n
Countering the thoughts of Dhoni on Malinga, Mathews was quoted by Indian Express<\/strong> saying, “Yes, I am aware we play a lot of cricket together but to ignore Lasith is not a good idea. He remains a very experienced man and he will surely have special plans against them.”<\/p>\n So far Champions Trophy has been a mixed bag for the Lankans and their so called wild card has turned out to be bizarre against Indian batting line-up. Malinga averages 40.88 in ODIs against India, his worst against a team he has faced more than once.<\/p>\n Mathews is not looking to make a mountain of a molehill and rubbished the thoughts of seeking a revenge of finals of World Cup 2011. He was quoted by DNA<\/strong> saying, “In sport, there is no word called revenge. We are aware of our poor record. It will be an achievement if Sri Lanka can beat India here on Thursday and on our day, we can beat any side in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n He knows the strength of Indian batting inside out and getting them out is surely not going to be an easy task for the likes of Malinga and Kulasekara. He was quoted by Deccan Chronicle<\/strong> saying, “India are a strong team to beat, but we are prepared physically and mentally. I just hope we get a full match so that essence of the semis is not lost especially in an ICC event.\u201d<\/p>\n Sri Lankan batting revolves around the Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardene and Tilakaratne Dilshan who cannot just make or break a situation for them but also are the brute force of this relatively inexperienced batting line-up. “They are the backbone of our batting but we have seven batsmen and young guys like (Dinesh) Chandimal and (Lahiru) Thirimanne are in good form,” Mathews said.<\/p>\n He was quoted by Deccan Herald<\/strong> saying, “We always can’t depend on certain players. We have to work as a team and whoever gets set has to bat till the last. It’s going to be a mix of Test and ODI batting and we have to keep our batting order flexible. We are a fighting team. All our three matches went down to the wire. We lost a close game against New Zealand, but the wins against England and Australia give us plenty of confidence. Our bowlers now have the experience to deal with the strong Indian batting,” said Mathews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cLasith Malinga will be our trump card against India in the Champions Trophy semi-fnal,\u201d says Sri Lankan skipper Angelo Mathews. He knows one thing really well, that his team requires some great deal of hard work to overpower the Indian team in this knock-out contest. He hopes that they will manage to pulls a bunny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1888,6126,4228,669,933],"class_list":["post-16049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-from-the-newspapers","tag-angelo-mathews","tag-champions-trophy","tag-kumar-sangakarra","tag-lasith-malinga","tag-mahela-jayawadene"],"yoast_head":"\n