Batting Coach Grant Flower emphasised the importance of playing the sweep shot and the reverse sweep if Sri Lanka are to make any headway during next month’s ICC T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“Quite a few guys were reluctant to play the reverse sweep as the belief within the guys is that they can manipulate the ball without having to play the sweep or the reverse sweep,” he stressed.
“But on big turning pitches sometimes when you can’t get down the track and you have to attack the strike you gotta play it,” the former Zimbabwe batsman revealed. “The guys do practice it but they need to practice it more because it is like hitting a cover drive and you have to practice it a lot to get that confidence.”
“We have spoken about it and you can have all team meetings but when the batsman is under pressure it is up to him to make the right decision and pick the right ball to play the shots.” “If you struggle to attack you are struggling for boundaries and you have to come out with some option if not the sweep or the reverse sweep,” he commented.
“It is not due to lack of practice but the guys do a lot of drills and we speak about it and it is just about the execution under pressure. We got to improve a lot in the warm-ups and Qualifiers of the World Cup.”
Flower was also concerned about the number of dot-balls that the Sri Lankan batsmen have played out in the last couple of games. “The analyst tells us the amount of dot-balls and it is recorded and we do have specific goals of dot-balls and we try to limit them each match,” he said
“But in the last few matches it has been very poor. Sometimes it comes because you try to hit the ball hard or look for too many boundaries.” “The guys work hard at the nets but the better side limits the dot balls a lot better than we do it,” Flower noted.
Flower also hoped that opener Kusal Janith Perera would recover fast in time for the T20 World Cup after having made a comeback following COVID-19.
“Kusal (Perera) is struggling a bit with his shoulder as he is not 100 percent fit. We thought it was the right time for him to come back into the team as we needed to bolster our batting line-up.”
“Despite his injury he looked likely to be the best batters and it shows the class of this guy and hopefully his shoulder would improve,” Flower believed. “He hasn’t had any net sessions at all and the ball that he got out was a little bit full to sweep. It is not lack of practice but it is all about pressure and execution in the middle,” Flower added.
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