ICC World Cup 2019 | I haven’t held the ball for a good eight months, reveals Angelo Mathews

ICC World Cup 2019 | I haven’t held the ball for a good eight months, reveals Angelo Mathews

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Angelo Mathews has revealed that he had not bowled in any form for eight months when he took the ball in a pressure situation against West Indies on Monday and picked up a crucial wicket. He went on to discuss the match in brief and his team’s disappointing World Cup campaign so far.

After setting a steep target of 339 for the West Indies, Sri Lanka had failed to replicate the bowling form they had shown so far, and the match was slipping from their hands. The Carribean team needed 31 runs off the last three overs and Nicholas Pooran was cruising along, having scored 118 off 102 balls. However, in a surprising decision, the ball was handed to Angelo Mathews who has not bowled internationally for nearly two years, instead of Jeffrey Vandersay who had gone for 50 in his seven overs.

The move paid dividends for skipper Dimuth Karunaratne and his team, with Mathews managing to get Pooran caught out off his very first ball. There on, they took full control of the match and won by a comfortable 23 runs

“I haven’t held the ball for a good eight months and that was my first ball. But yeah, we knew we had to make up for the two overs and we could not play spinners towards the end when Pooran was batting beautifully. So I went up to the captain and said look, I have a bit of experience so I’ll just try bowling the two overs,” Mathews stated in the post match conference, reported Cricbuzz.

“Pooran was the man we were trying to get and it was fortunate for me to get him on the first ball, before he could clobber me for a few sixes,” the all-rounder laughed.

An all-rounder by nature, Mathews has as many as 115 wickets in ODIs but successive injuries and back problems have kept him from bowling regularly. He has been a part of the World Cup squad so far, as a specialist middle-order batsman because of his experience. However, he plans to resume bowling very soon.

“I need to bowl and build it up  because the body needs to adapt. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to sort of build it up before the tournament. Glad that I was able to help the team out bowling a couple of overs today but I’ll try my best to start bowling as soon as possible going forward,” Mathews said on the matter.

Sri Lanka had a disappointing start to the campaign but slowly and gradually started getting into their game and put up some brilliant performances, most notably upsetting the hosts England. However, they have often failed to capitalize on the key moments and have ended up bottling games from dominating positions. The win against Windies left them in the fifth spot, which is where they will be looking forward to end the group stages with a win against India in their final match.

“We are disappointed. We had our chances throughout the tournament. In the Australian game, the middle order didn’t fire, we had the game in our hands after such a brilliant start. Again, in the South Africa game, we didn’t bat well. So we had our opportunities in the tournament but unfortunately we could not reach the semifinals. But if we finish off well now, it will be a good thing,” Mathews signed off. 

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