Mathews confident his squad could beat home team
SRI Lanka captain Angelo Mathews believes his young team stand a chance of beating South Africa – but acknowledges the entire unit will need to play to its potential.
Mathews, who is back in the squad after missing out on Sri Lanka’s recent tour of Zimbabwe, said the squad had shown encouraging signs of late and had moved on after the retirement of experienced players Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara and Tillakaratne Dilshan.
“We’ve had a few ups and downs in the past two years or so when Sanga, Mahela and Dilshan retired,” Mathews said yesterday.
“It created a vacuum in the team, but I think the youngsters have taken it up well.
“We saw in the Australian series [3-0 win] that some youngsters stood up and it’s great to see them coming through.
“There are lots of positives from our team. Everyone is working extremely hard.
“They want to get better at their game each and every day.”
“For us, it was a good series against the Australians back at home in completely different conditions.
“South Africa have been playing extremely good cricket.
“They went over to Australia and beat them there, which is not an easy thing to do.
“But if we play to our potential we have the skill.
“We are not looking too far ahead.
“Our objective is to try to win the series, but we will take it one day at a time.”
Sri Lanka are in the odd position that none of the current squad has played an international at St George’s Park, and Mathews is not too sure what to make of that just yet.
“We’ll not think about it too much because we don’t know what we going to get. We’ll play it by ear.
“On the 25th we’ll take a good look at the pitch and then make a call.”
Mathews said the squad’s time in Potchefstroom before heading to Port Elizabeth was well spent.
“The preparation has been really good over the past 10 days in Potchefstroom.
“We had plenty of time to acclimatise.
“The pitches were quite a bit slower than in other parts of South Africa, but I thought we got the maximum out of the time we spent there.”