As Sri Lanka battled to avoid a rare 5-0 whitewash at home in the five-match one-day international series against India, the teams ODI batting coach AvishkaGunawardene feels that Kusal Mendis, one of the brightest young stars in the team is mentally drained and needs to be rested.Mendis has failed to fire in the ongoing one-day series against India being dismissed for scores of 36, 19, 1 and 1. We had a chat after the last game.
He is still 22. We feel that he is mentally drained nothing to do with any technical things. We will see what the management comes up with. Better to give him a break before the next tour ratherthan keep playing him throughout, said Gunawardene ahead of the fifth and finalODI at the R Premadasa Stadium today.
Since making his Test debut against West Indies on October 2015, Mendis has not missed a single Test or ODI played by Sri Lanka. In fact he has played in 20 consecutive Tests and 37 consecutive ODIs to-date. Personally, someone who is young like that should be playing longer version of the game and ODI cricket. I would rather keep him out of T20 cricket. He is still a player who is developing. Obviously we are looking at the next so many years from him. Better keep him in the longer format, its my personal opinion, said Gunawardene.
With Upul Tharanga returning to captain the side after serving a two-match ban for slow over rate Sri Lanka in all probability may rest Mendis for todays match as well as the one-off T20 International on September 6 as they have a heavy international program ahead of them in the next four months.
At the end of the India series, Sri Lanka will travel to the UAE in the third week of the month to play Pakistan in a series of 2 Tests, 5 ODIs and 3 T20Is. It will be followed by a tour to India in December for a series of 3 Tests, 5 ODIs and one T20I and a tour to Bangladesh in January for a series of 2 Tests, 3ODIs and one T20I.
Sri Lanka has lost the first four ODIs and Gunawardene said the confidence levelof the team is really down. If I say the mood is really good I will be lying. To be brutally honest, confidence level is really down naturally so, when you are 4-0 down.
But I must say that the guys are trying hard. Their enthusiasm is still pretty high. We have been trying to give them certain targets and hopefully we can achieve thosetargets, said Gunawardene.It has been Sri Lankas batting that has failed to click and put up decent totals for the bowlers to defend.
In the first four ODIs they have struggled to get to 200 plus and against a strong Indian batting line up such a total was outof the question to defend and win. The technical side we dont want to mess around while a series is on. Its moremental preparations that we need to work on. Tactical parts to worn on more thantechnical part.
That is what we are lacking. All four ODIs, out of the top six guys, almost everyone has taken a start. However, they couldn’t go to get a bigone. Small things that we discuss, the guys are still young and they need to learn and learn fast, Gunawardene said.Explaining the targets set for the players Gunawardene said, Especially in batting dot balls has become a big issue for us.
Our dot ball ratio in the last 12 months is something like 145 in a game. That is almost 50 percent. That is one area we have to rectify. We have told the team to improve that area by about 15 percent. We are trying to see whether we could improve our singles ratio while cutting down on dot ballratio.
Another target is that we try to tell the top five that someone has to bat for 45 overs. Batting partnership is something that we have spoken where we ask players to give us a 100 plus stand and a 75 plus stand. We achieved those targets in the Zimbabwe series. If we can do that the batsmen are capable of getting a decent score, said Gunawardene.
With Sri Lanka having failed to automatically qualify for a place in the 2019 World Cup and having to wait for the outcome of the England-West Indies ODI series, Gunawardene said, It has gone beyond our control now. We have to make sure that we try and win the game tomorrow. That is the only way we can turn things around. India took a day off from practice yesterday.