One change likely for Sri Lanka in deciding ODI

Sri Lanka players practicing ahead of the series deciding third ODI (Pic courtesy SLC)

Sri Lanka’s interim Head Coach Rumesh Ratnayake hinted at atleast one change for today’s third ODI, with his team facing the prospect of a second successive home series defeat to Zimbabwe. 

After a comfortable five-wicket win in the first ODI last Sunday, Sri Lanka fell 22 runs short in their chase of a challenging target of 303 run on Tuesday, setting up today’s series deciding match.

The fact that Sri Lanka were set targets just north of 300 in both matches was a point of concern for Sri Lanka’s interim Head Coach. 

“When you look at our bowling, we can’t give 300 runs. As a coach, I don’t like us giving 300 runs, because we looked at restricting them to 260. We spoke about fixing that, the last few days, and today our preparation was to fix that,” he told the media yesterday. 

Key to Zimbabwe reaching those big scores were the contributions at the top of the order, mainly from Sean Williams, who scored a century on Sunday, and Craig Ervine with 91 in the second ODI, both of whom are left-handed batsmen. 

The change that was hinted at would appear to be targeting the two seasoned batsmen.

“There is a change that we are considering, but we’ll only know tomorrow for sure if it’s a change we want to make. I think the combination we have in mind for tomorrow will work, because they have two left-handed batters who have troubled us the most. So there is a chance we change our strategy to address that,” Ratnayake said. 
Victory today will consolidate Sri Lanka’s position in the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Super League table, but having played more matches than the teams below them, it will be hard for Sri Lanka to hold onto that position. 
For Zimbabwe, today’s decider gives them a chance to add to the 3-2 series win they recorded the last time they toured for a ODI series in 2017, their only ODI series win in Sri Lanka so far.