Building squad to defend world title vital than result – Malinga

Sri Lanka T20 captain Lasith Malinga said that winning and losing was part of the game and that he was not duly worried about the defeat at the hands of West Indies in the second T20 international but more concerned in building up a strong squad of 15 players to defend the World T20 title in India next year.

Sri Lanka lost to West Indies on Wednesday and to share the two-match series played for the Hero Cup one-all.

Sri Lanka are the reigning World T20 champs having won the final in Bangladesh against India last year.

Malinga who led Sri Lanka to that memorable win said, “Everybody likes to win but more than the result we have to look at how we can build a strong team of 15 players to defend our world T20 title in India.

“That’s why we tried out several youngsters in the two games. While in the process of experimenting we will suffer losses but what is important more than anything else is that we need to pick a strong squad of players to defend the title,” he said.

West Indies captain Darren Sammy said the key to beating Sri Lanka was the constant bowling changes they made that resulted in Sri Lanka being unable to build partnerships that was necessary during a run chase.

Sri Lanka chasing a target of 163 were bundled out for 139 to lose by 23 runs. “They didn’t get used to any particular bowler. The plan was to give one-over spells to the bowlers and it worked,” said Sammy.

“We kept on picking wickets every time they looked like building a partnership that was the key for us.

“When we played the final here we scored 130-something and defended it – that was a reminder for the guys when we went into field,” Sammy said. “We had a good start. We controlled our play. They didn’t get off to a flyer.”

“(Lasith) Malinga hit a lot of his yorkers and so did (Nuwan) Kulasekara. They bowled really well at the end of the innings. The work done by (Johnson) Charles and (Andre) Fletcher at the top gave us that cushion – even if they bowled some good overs,” he said.

West Indies opening pair put on 62 off 6.2 overs that set the tone for their final total.

Sammy was extremely happy to see his team end their tour of Sri Lanka on a winning note after having gone without a win in any of their last seven matches. “It’s good to end the series on a winning note. You could see the difference after playing the first game which we still thought we could have won,” said Sammy.

“But coming from a long break from T20 international shows how quickly you could learn. You could see it was a much professional effort out there.

The likes of (Dwayne) Bravo who was man of the match, (Kieron) Pollard, the senior guys stepped up. The past score here was 150, we got 30 more and we were able to defend it,” he said.

For this series West Indies were without two of their experienced T20 players Chris Gayle and Lendl Simmons who were both injured.