Sri Lanka and Afghanistan warn their batsmen not to run into trouble

Sri Lanka and Afghanistan are both demanding more resilience from their batsmen as they look to bounce back from defeats in their opening World Cup games.

The rivals meet in Cardiff today knowing that another loss would further harm their hopes of making an impact in the tournament.

Sri Lanka bowl er La si th Ma lin ga, pictured, has described the match as “must win” and has called for composure in response to a ten-wicket defeat by New Zealand. He said: “Patience is very important. Whoever the batsman is, he has to finish the game.

“I feel players need to get confidence and we need to get mentally tough. The pressure is on us, but we have to play with freedom and do our best.

“It’s a must-win game. The important thing is handling pressure, that’s the big challenge for us.

“We’ll try our best and hopefully will be there.”

Afghanistan captain Gul bad in Naib also pin points batting as the reason for his side’ s seven-wicket loss to Australia having been reduced to 77 for five at one point.

“My message has been to look at the positives. We missed out early on and then we scored 200 -plus, so if we have wickets in hand it could have been 300-plus,” Naib said. “We need to not give away wickets easily, then we can have wickets in hand and then we have the potential in the last ten overs to score 80 or 90 runs, or more.

“Any of the teams on this kind of surface in England can score 300 as it’s not difficult to score runs, so the players need to play their game and stay calm.”

Na ibsen se st hat today’ s opponents are vulnerable, but should not be underestimated.

“If you look at the Sri Lanka team, the last two years they have been struggling in the one -day matches so we have an opportunity to do well against them,” Naib said.

“I hope that if we can play 50 overs, especially in the batting, maybe we can beat them, but they are also a good team and we cannot take them lightly.”