Sri Lanka skipper Angelo Mathews hit back at critics who claimed that his team was under prepared for the Champions Trophy, and reiterated that they were ready for the challenge as they are professionals.

“There has been a little bit of doubt; people kept saying that the boys are in India and they haven’t had good preparation, but I want to write it off because we are professionals,” Mathews said at a pre-tournament media conferences in Birmingham yesterday.

Mathews said that the Indian Premier League provided a great opportunity for the top players to get in the nick for the Champions Trophy. “We had some good preparation in the past couple of months I would say, and most of the boys were in India” Mathews said.

“The boys who were in Sri Lanka had some good preparation through playing some practice games. It’s a huge event for everyone, personally and as a team. So I think we’ve done our preparation as a team and individually,” Mathews added.

Mathews stoutly defended his senior players most of whom were terribly out of touch during the recent IPL tournament and failed to even secure a regular place in their franchise teams. He said he was not concerned about the IPL flop of seniors like Kumar Sangakkara, Tillakaratne Dilshan and Mahela Jayawardene all of whom are past Sri Lanka captains and claimed that he had confidence in their class.

“I never pointed out that I have any concerns about their performances, and I think they’ve been world class for us. It’s not even a concern when it comes to a tournament like this because they’ve been here, they’ve done it, and I have the confidence in them. I’m really proud to have these guys in my team because I can get a lot of information and help. So I’m really happy to have them in the team,” said Mathews.

Having been drawn into the much stronger of the two groups for the preliminary round alongside hosts England, Australia and New Zealand, Sri Lanka are likely to have a struggle on their hands under the seaming conditions of England’s early summer, but Mathews said he was not overly worried by the bleak prospects.

“Australia and New Zealand they’re quite used to the conditions, especially in England, and with the two new balls, it’s going to be tough. But I think our boys are up for the challenge, and if we want to go far in the tournament, I think we’ve got to beat all the teams that come our way,” Mathews said.

Mathews said they have set their sights on reaching the semi finals and admitted that they will not look far.

“I think at this point our main objective is to try to get to the semifinals, but I think that’s too far ahead. We need to try to take one game at a time and try and win those,” he said.

Mathews agreed that adjusting to the conditions in England would be a difficult task especially for the batsmen.

“We’ve been playing in low slow conditions and very hot and humid conditions in the past couple months. I think trying to adjust to the conditions is going to be the main challenge. Yeah, especially early summer is always going to be like this, wet, and it’s going to swing and seam. So I think that’s our main challenges as batters especially. I think if we can get our batting right, we can go a long way,” Mathews said adding that he had no issues with the bowling department.

“I think the bowlers have got the firepower. We haven’t got the pace, but we know how to go in these conditions, and I think in one group guys like Lasith Malinga, Thisara Perera, have got their firepower.

I think we’ve got a good couple of spinners, as well,” said Mathews.

The young skipper also said that he would back his team to live up to their reputation having reached the finals in the last two World Cup events and the last two ICC World T20 tournaments.

“We’ve done pretty well in the past World Cups, in the Twenty20s. So I think if we can get this right this time, it would be awesome. We’ve done pretty well here on the big stage, and it’s just that I can’t really point out what went wrong in the finals and semifinals, but we are hoping to better the performances which we have done in the past,” said Mathews. (By Channaka de Silva)

Source: Daily Mirror (Sri Lanka)