Nepal confident on beating Sri Lanka

By A Staff Reporter,Kathmandu, June 12: Nepal’s national men’s cricket team captain Rohit Kumar Paudel has expressed the team’s confidence in defeating Sri Lanka, a better and well-accomplished team than Nepal, at the T20 World Cup.

Nepal and Sri Lanka are playing in the 9th T20 World Cup at 5:15 am Nepali time on Wednesday. The match is at Central Broward Park and Broward County Stadium in Lauderhill, Florida. 

After losing the opener against the Netherlands in Dallas, Nepal wants to upset the Test side Sri Lanka in their second world cup match. 

Skipper Paudel expressed his confidence that Nepal has good chance of ending Sri Lanka’s World Cup journey during the pre-match conference held on Tuesday. Already losing two matches, Sri Lanka is on the verge of exit. The win over Nepal will raise the Lankan’s chance to progress.

 “We believe we can defeat any team. We will play as the conditions demand. There has been a lot of ups and downs in the tournament. More than the associate teams, Test teams are under pressure. We want to utilise this situation, create more pressure on Sri Lanka and win tomorrow’s game. We will focus on keeping the basics right,” said Paudel.

At a time when the USA defeated Pakistan, Canada defeated Ireland and South Africa almost lost to the Netherlands, “Our team is motivated,” said Paudel.

Regarding the conditions in Florida after struggling in Dallas, Paudel said, “There have been difficult conditions in the USA. Florida has hosted international cricket matches earlier as well; thus, compared to Dallas and New York, the wicket in Florida is good,” 

Nevertheless, Paudel stressed the need to tackle the threat of Sri Lankan bowling. “Sri Lanka has very good spinners. As a bowling unit, they are doing good. We need to tackle that part,” Paudel added.

Addressing a concern regarding the playing XI against Sri Lanka, Paudel informed that it will be decided after analysing the conditions before the match.

On the other hand, Sri Lanka looks forward to utilising its bowling strength against Nepal and registering their first win in the tournament. Sri Lanka has already lost two matches against South Africa and Bangladesh. 

“Sri Lanka’s bowling side can challenge anyone. We have an ideal combo for any international team…Sri Lankan bowling is quite difficult to handle,” said Sri Lanka’s bowling coach Aqib Javed during the pre-match conference.

Despite having good bowlers, Javed informed the team will focus on doing the basics right. “Now, people are realising how unpredictable the pitches are. We were the first ones to go through this process. Bowlers know they cannot experiment on the pitches here. The bowlers will be focusing on the basics,” said Javed, who has faced Nepal earlier as the coach of the UAE. 

Sri Lanka has already played two warm-up matches at Central Broward Park and Broward County Stadium. The team lost to the Netherlands but defeated Ireland. In both matches, the score of 160 was crossed by the teams batting first.