Windies, Sri Lanka in dogfight

CAPE TOWN: Sri Lanka and West Indies cricket teams will take nothing for granted today when they meet in a crunch World Cup match, both must win to stay in contention. 

The unexpected win by Kenya over Sri Lanka has Group B spinning on its head and given host-nation South Africa a new life-line to qualify for the Super Sixes. Of the remaining five Group B matches, Sri Lanka faces the toughest task of qualifying. A victory over either the West Indies or South Africa will guarantee Sanath Jayasuriya’s side a place in the final six. Otherwise, get the calculators out! If Kenya and New Zealand win as expected against Bangladesh and Canada respectively and finish with 16 points each, South Africa and the West Indies must win the last two games before the net-run-rate will decide which top three will qualify.

Two more wins will allow West Indies to finish as group leaders while South Africa will tie with New Zealand and Kenya with 16 points. In the unlikely scenario of Sri Lanka beating both the West Indies and South Africa, the 1996 winners will finish leading the group with 20 points. In which case New Zealand and Kenya will qualify. A defeat in one of the remaining two matches for either West Indies or South Africa will end their respective World Cups. West Indies’ wash out against Bangladesh hurt them a lot after Carl Hooper’s team was forced to share two points each when it looked like winning. Jayasuriya believed the shock in Nairobi was a timely wake up call for the former champions. They they were beginning to lose focus concentrating more on the run rate while the middle-order was neglected.

“We shouldn’t put ourselves under pressure,” Jayasuriya said. “We have played enough cricket between us and we have the experience and we can rise from what happened the other day. “We didn’t expect to lose to Kenya. But it’s history. We have worked a lot on our middle-order batting now by giving them more batting in the nets. They’re not batting well at the moment, they have to accept that.”  Jayasuriya said the key to winning against the West Indies will be to do the basics right — bat, bowl, and field.

Teams:  SRI LANKA (from) —  Sanath Jayasuriya (capt), Marvan Atapattu, Mahela Jayawardene, Kumar Sangakkara, Aravinda De Silva, Russel Arnold, Hashan Tillakaratne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Chaminda Vaas, Dilhara Fernando, Pulasthi Gunaratne, Prabath Nissanka.  WEST INDIES (from) — Carl Hooper (capt), Ridley Jacobs, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Pedro Collins, Corey Collymore, Mervyn Dillon, Vasbert Drakes, Chris Gayle, Wavell Hinds, Brian Lara, Jermaine Lawson, Nixon McLean, Ricardo Powell, Marlon Samuels, Ramnaresh Sarwan. Umpires: Srinivas Venkataraghavan, India, and David Orchard, South Africa.