Perera under pressure to finish World Cup campaign on a high

ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021

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Senior batter Kusal Perera will be under tremendous pressure when he opens the batting for Sri Lanka in their final match of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2021 against West Indies on 4th November in Abu Dhabi. Sri Lanka is already out of the semi-final race having lost three Super 12 matches, while winning only one game.

Reporting from Dubai

Throughout the competition, Perera has only scored 94 runs in 7 innings at the top of the order, facing only 80 deliveries. His average of 15.66 is not so appealing and he will be itching to end the campaign on a high against the defending champions, the Windies, who have looked below par throughout their campaign losing 2 matches out of 3 games.

“Kusal Janith has done everything right to get himself ready and prepared for the games. He’s worked extremely hard and it just hasn’t worked for him. And sometimes that happens,”  Head Coach Mickey Arthur told ahead of the West Indies clash.

“But I’m fully confident that he’s still one of our most dynamic short-form batsmen. When he’s on song, he’s a match winner for us. So there’s still one game to go. Let’s see what happens. But, yeah, he’s disappointed, as we all are with his form so far. But it hasn’t been through any lack of trying. He’s worked extremely hard at his game,” Arthur further stated.

Most teams have employed the tactic of starting off with a spinner against Perera, since he has shown a tendency to succumb to the slower bowlers inside the powerplay. He fell to the spin trap against Ireland, Bangladesh and England while his cross-batted stroke-play brought his downfall against two genuine quicks in Mitchell Starc and Anrich Nortje during Australia and South Africa games respectively.

“All he needs is to bat 20 balls. If he can bat 20 balls we know he’ll have about around 20 runs. So I don’t think he’s out of form particularly with the bat. I think he just hasn’t got any tempo yet to his batting. Tempo is such an important thing in Twenty20 batting. So I still back him 100 percent. So let’s hope that we know that he’s a match winner. So let’s just hope that he delivers for us at some point with the West Indies game,” backed Perera to fire on Thursday.

Apart of his poor run with the bat, Perera’s wicket-keeping throughout the competition has also been pretty dismal to say the least. He dropped a sitter of David Warner when he was on 18 in the Australia game. Warner pounced on and scored a match-winning 65. In the South African game, Perera dropped Temba Bavuma at a crucial time when the Proteas Skipper was on 6. He went onto score 46 to anchor the chase.

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Both these drops could have made a difference in the final result, as Sri Lanka lost both the matches after being in strong positions. Recovering from a shoulder injury which he picked up during the England stint, Perera was not at his 100% and it was quite visible while he was going about his business behind the stumps. Even during the South Africa matches which were played in September before the World Cup, Perera struggled with his fitness from having contracted COVID-19 in August.

31-year-old Perera still remains a match-winner with the bat, as he can explode on any given day, but he will have to work on his fitness and wicket-keeping to warrant a place in the side. The selectors, going forward, may look for other long-term options, as the southpaw is mostly concentrating on limited-overs Cricket in the recent past.

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