18 June 2023 06:45 pm Views - 4163
World's legendary spinner Muthiah Muralidaran believes that his national team Sri Lanka will qualify for the forthcoming ICC World Cup.
Speaking exclusively over the telephone from Colombo, the world's leading wicket taker Muralidaran said, "I have no doubt about Sri Lankla's participation in the mega event. The reason being the Sri Lankan team is the strongest among all ten participating teams. Our team is better in all departments of the game and can beat West Indies and Zimbabwe also".
"Yes, it is true that we could not qualify automatically for the World Cup but the performance of our team has considerably increased recently and we could win the bilateral series against Afghanistan even after losing the first ODI".
However, since the end of the 2019 World Cup, Sri Lanka have won just 18 of 42 ODIs, out of which 23 were part of the World Cup Super League. Of those, they won seven.
It may, however, also be noted here that Sri Lankan had a particularly unfavourable set of fixtures for this World Cup Super League cycle. Four of the eight series they played were against the strong teams of India, New Zealand, South Africa and England. And not to forget that the matches against England and New Zealand were not in Sri Lanka.
"Even if the team loses one match, it can still qualify and I am optimistic about the Sri Lankan team", Muralitharan, the world's highest Test wicket taker, said.
Sri Lanka is placed in Group B and its opponents are : Ireland, Oman, Scotland and the UAE.
Sri Lanka will be playing its first match against the UAE team on Monday. (BIPIN DANI)
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