There was a serious problem with shot selection as well as handling situations: Sanath Jayasuriya

Sri Lanka vs Australia.
(Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Sri Lanka succumbed to their biggest defeat in Test cricket against Australia in the first Test at Galle on Saturday, February 1. The loss, by an innings and 242 runs, disappointed their head coach Sanath Jayasuriya who, in his analysis of what went wrong, blamed the batters for their shot selection and situation awareness.

The home team conceded 654 runs in the first innings. In reply, they were bowled out for 165. Australia enforced the follow-on and the Lankans fared much better in the second innings (247) but it was far from making the visitors bat again. Jayasuriya expected his experienced batters to perform well considering they have handled different situations in the past.

“There was a serious problem with shot selections, as well as with handling situations. 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 have talked to them about this. But we have got to talk to them in detail about this now,” said Jayasuriya while talking to the press.

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Jayasuriya pointed out that the biggest problem was the batters were not able to convert starts into big scores. He gave the example of the opposition batters, namely Usman Khawaja (232), Steve Smith (141), and Josh Inglis (102), who went on to score centuries. Jayasuriya stressed that the conditions were much more familiar to his team and so they should have been able to take advantage of the same.

“The biggest problem is the batters who are taking a start but are not going to play a long innings. 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 are 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,” added Jayasuriya.

The second Test begins on Thursday, February 6 at the same venue, Galle.

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