“Sri Lanka youth cricketers did well against Australia” Hashan Tillkeratne

Focused on the next Youth World Cup in South Africa in 2020, Sri Lankan Under 19 cricketers are preparing themseleves for the big show as they concluded a evenly contested three match One-day series against a visiting Australian side. The visitors won the series 2 matches to one.

Speaking after the tournament, Sri Lankan coach and former national captain Hashan Tillakeratne said that he was very satisfied with the performances of the batters, while bowling department had to looked into. According to the coach, the fielding standards of the youth cricketers too has suffered a retreat and surely these areas would be discussed and improved in the next tournaments.

“It was a strong Australian side with around five of their players are very experienced and they wouldnt be there for the next world cup, but we have a young team picked aiming the next world cup, so I am happy with the overall performances of the players” said coach Tillakeratne.

We chase 304 runs and finished with 297 at the second one day game. First game we scored 262 runs . Earlier we had to satisfied with 220-230 runs average and there were lot of dot balls during the innings . We gave some challenges to the players and they had to go for that especially we pointed out the value of less dot balls during this one day innings. I think our batsman did it smartly with some improvement added Tillekaratna.

I think match exposure is more important for this type of young cricketers.  We pointed out that value  that understood about these areas . However we knew our standard and wanted to make future plans . Opener Navod Paranawithana was out  nearly three weeks  due to injury and  that also big  lost fore the next three day game which will commence on 10th January at the SSC grounds. During the last six months Paranawithana is our talented good opening batsman but due to his injury now we can give another player to opportunity . We have  more batsman in our pool and replacements are available  said coach Tillekaratna.

Although Sri Lanka lost the first two games, Sri Lankans were able to give a good fight at the end scoring over 260 runs in both matches. The youth team had averaged around 230 runs per innings in the previous tournaments.

“We have been continuing to offer chances to some potential players although they were on a bad run and now we see the batsmen are coming good” said head coach Tillakeratne adding that bowling coach Chaminda Vaas and fielding coach Upul Chandana too are very much focused on nurturing the proper talent of the players aiming the next world cup.

“After the series, these cricketers will be back to their school’s cricketing calendar and we will discuss with the Sri Lanka Cricket as to the possibilities of maintaining a permanent pool with these youngsters” said Hashan Tillakeratne, who showed more commitment in building up a winning team for the next world cup in South Africa.