Cardiff: Sri Lankan skipper Angelo Mathews has said India are a strong team but he has players who can rise to the challenge and beat them.
“India are a very strong team to beat, and the past record against them has not been very good for us. But hopefully we can turn things around tomorrow,” said Mathews.
His approach will be to not think too much about the strength of the Indians and play positive cricket.
“All that we need to do is play positive cricket. And considering the weather, which is not in our control, apparently it’s going to rain quite a bit, we need to try and control the things that we can control like batting, bowling and fielding. We will try and do our best in that and try and win,” added Mathews who believes that the morale of his team is very high after having beaten the host country (England) as well as the defending champions (Australia).
“After the New Zealand game, we had to do it the hard way and we had to beat England in English conditions and also the Australians had played really well in the past couple of months. The boys responded brilliantly. We had to win the two games to get into the semi-finals, and we had to do it the hard way, and the boys responded brilliantly.”
Mathews does not consider this contest as a chance to revenge their 2011 World Cup final defeat to India.
“There’s no room for revenge in sport. If we can beat the Indians, I think it’ll be a great achievement for the whole team because, you know, there are thoughts about the World Cup final, and the recent history against them is not very good for Sri Lanka. On our day we can beat any team. I’m sure the boys are up for it and are geared to take on India.”
Asked whether he considers his team’s batting as strong as the Indians, Mathews said: “I think we have seven really good batters who can score a hundred on any day an we had to fight really hard in the last three games, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene have been brilliant and also [Tillakaratne] Dilshan and [Lahiru] Thirimanne. So hopefully the batting will click once again.”
Mathews feels his team is a good mix of youth and experience. “It’s kind of a mixture. It is a transition period for us where the seniors are also in, but we are trying to inject some new blood into the system. But I think we’ve got to do it carefully because we can’t just bring in youngsters.
“We can’t play all 11 youngsters and try and win games. We need to have that balance — the correct balance between seniors and juniors. When we were brought into the system there were seniors as well and they helped us to go through all the challenges, all the nervous moments, all the anxious moments. We need that comfort from the seniors, as well, in the team.”
When Mathews was told about Dhoni’s remark that his pacer Lasith Malinga may not be a threat, he said: “It is true Indians have played him (Malinga) a lot. Malinga is a very good bowler and he’s an experienced bowler to come into those situations. I’m sure he has a few different ideas for tomorrow.”
Mathews said he had not made any special plans to get Shikhar Dhawan out early too.
“We are not looking at any particular player, but we are making plans for the whole batting line-up,” he said.
