T20 World Cup 2024

20-20 World Cup 2022: ‘The five matches before Super 12 will be an advantage’, feels Sri Lanka captain Dasun Shanaka

Sri Lanka, who won the Asia Cup 2022, aren’t among the 8 teams, that have directly qualified for the Super 12 stage in the upcoming 20-20 World Cup in Australia. They will have to play the preliminary round to qualify for the Super 12s.

They are placed in Group A in the first round along with the teams like Namibia, the Netherlands, and the UAE. Before that, they will also be playing two warm-up games against Zimbabwe and Ireland on the 10th and 13th of October 2022.

Sri Lanka skipper Dasun Shanaka, however, doesn’t look at this as a roadblock but rather sees this as an opportunity to acclimatize to the Australian pitches before they make it to the Super 12s. He feels the extra matches that they are ought to play heading into the Super 12s will be added ‘advantage’.

“The last T20 World Cup (in UAE) we played the qualifying round and got into the tournament proper because we adapted to the ground conditions we had an advantage,” Shanaka said.

“The five matches which we are due to play in Australia will be to our advantage because we can read the conditions and the wickets going into the Super 12,” he added.

Given how they played in the Asia Cup 2022, no team would be taking them lightly at the mega event. They have shut down all the critics in the last couple of years with their morale-boosting performances. Sri Lanka beat Pakistan in the final of the Asia Cup 2022 by 23 runs to lift the trophy for the 6^th occasion in the history of the tournament. Also, since April 2014, it was the first time when they won five consecutive T20 internationals.

Dasun Shanaka and Co. will kickstart their campaign against Namibia in the Group A clash on 16^th October 2022 at Simonds Stadium in Geelong, followed by matches against UAE and Netherlands on 18th and 20th October 2022 respectively.