Series defeat to Zimbabwe bitter pill to swallow: Mathews

Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews conceded that the ODI series defeat to Zimbabwe, on Monday (July 10) at Suriyawewa, was one of the lowest points of his career. Zimbabwe won the fifth and final ODI by three wickets to record a come-from-behind 3-2 series win. It was Zimbabwe's first ever series win on Sri Lankan soil.

"It's one of the lowest points in my career. This one is hard to swallow. Everything went against us today from toss to misreading the wicket. No excuses though. At the end of the day we were not good enough to beat them. They played better cricket," noted Mathews.

Mathews, who has been under fire and after losing the fourth ODI to the 11th ranked Zimbabwe, had conceded that he may not lead the side till the 2019 World Cup. He was asked whether he will step down after the shocking series defeat and said he needed more time to think.

"I still haven't thought about it. I will give it a bit more thought. I need to talk to the selectors."

Sri Lanka's batting had done well throughout the series, but the batsmen failed miserably in the deciding game as they could manage only 203.

"I am bitterly disappointed that our batting was a flop today. Although we did well throughout the series with batting, our eventual score wasn't enough today. We have lot of improvements to make. As a team we trained hard but nothing was working in the middle."

Fast bowler Lasith Malinga was a huge disappointing throughout the series. He came into the series needing six wickets to become that fourth Sri Lankan to take 300 ODI wickets, but managed only four wickets at an average of 50. He did have a decent second spell in Monday's game, bowling with fire, and found some reverse swing going. But overall he has been a huge disappointment. On Monday he struggled in fielding as well, dropping a catch off his own bowling apart from couple of misfields.

"I thought he bowled well. He has been trying hard. He has been not playing lot of 50-overs cricket. He told the selectors that he is available to play all five games. Younger bowlers are learning from him and he reverse swung the ball to deadly effect today," Mathews said backing his premier bowler.

Sri Lanka's selectors have come under heavy fire after snubbing Dinesh Chandimal, their best batsman in ODI cricket in the last two years, for this series. Former captain Arjuna Ranatunga had criticized the snubbing of Chandimal while another former captain, Kumar Sangakkara, echoed the same.

"Look, as the selectors explained the other day, we decided to have only six batsmen as we thought having a spinning all-rounder moving forward was good. After we lost the first game, things changed dramatically. The selectors had ideas to bring in other players once we won the series for the last two games, but everything went wrong after we lost the first game," mentioned Mathews.

Sri Lanka also had left out Suranga Lakmal, their most improved fast bowler in the last 12 months, from the initial games. Although he was brought back for latter part of the series, he was ruled out due to fever. Mathews was asked whether his team was cocky thinking they could take a 3-0 lead heading into the last few games against 11th ranked Zimbabwe.

"We weren't cocky. We had Nuwan Pradeep in the squad and our initial plan was to play Nuwan two games and then rest him ahead of the Test match. Suranga was supposed to play the next few games. Suranga needed a break as he has been playing for the last few months. There are so many important Test matches coming up for us," he said.

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