We’ve competed better against India

India’s loss on Sunday to Australia has thrown us a welcome lifeline. The defeats to India and Australia were very disappointing, as we should have won both matches. But we didn’t, and we only have ourselves to blame. We now need to win both our remaining matches, but our focus is firmly on India tomorrow.

Our batting, especially against Australia, has been poor throughout this tournament. Kumar (Sangakkara) has been brilliant, but the rest of us have been unacceptably inconsistent. You can talk all you want as a team but at the end of the day the batsmen have to work out their gameplan and execute it when the pressure is on.

We fought really hard against India last week and with a bit of luck the result might have been different. Two guys being run out with deflections from a straight drive is incredibly unfortunate and consequently, despite a good partnership in the middle, we finished about 15-20 runs short of the kind of total that we wanted.

Then, against Australia, we bowled extremely well to keep them down to a low score. We should have been tighter in the field, though, and that cost us some runs. Another poor start put us in a difficult position, but when the rain intervened we still thought we could win the game so it was disappointing that it was decided on Duckworth Lewis.

There were positives from both last week’s games and we’ll take these into tomorrow’s match. We have competed better against India than we have done against Australia in this tournament and we need to continue that. But a key thing we are stressing is that we start tomorrow with a fresh slate. It is a knockout game for us and all that has happened before is irrelevant.

Unfortunately Farveez Maharoof has picked up a side strain and that means we’ve needed to have a long think about the balance of the team. We like playing five bowlers because we feel the ability to take wickets is crucial, but we cannot do that without an all rounder at No 7 to balance off the team.

That means we’ll probably go into the game with seven batters and the fifth bowler duties will be shared between Sanath (Jayasuriya), Dilshan and Kapugedera. The fact that the pitch is the same that was used for a domestic final at the weekend might indicate some turn later on so this combination could work out well.

We’re not really sure how the pitch will play, though. It will depend on how much moisture there is at the start. However, we’re expecting some early movement for the quicks and we think the pace will be similar to Adelaide, perhaps even a little slower. Being a day game it might be a little easier to chase, but the re-used pitch might also get slower so it is a tough call.

Our only hope is that the weather stays fair. It was lovely yesterday, bright and sunny with comfortable temperatures. But there is talk of a little bit of rain and no one wants any more interruptions it what should be a really tight and hard-fought clash. (Gameplan)