Future of Sri Lanka is bright: Graham Ford

Sri Lanka lost to Pakistan by 3 wickets in a close encounter which eventually sealed their fate in the ICC Champions Trophy. But according to their coach Graham Ford, the island nation gained more from the tournament than some other teams have. These comments from Ford are largely due to his team’s famous victory over India when they chased 321 with relative ease.

Ford felt that the modest showings by the top order in the tournament were largely due to inexperience. “If you look at the number of caps in the India side, and the number of caps in ours, we’re vastly inexperienced, yet we outplayed them completely,” Ford said. “I do feel that with inexperience, we’re not going to get those performances every day of the week. We are going to have disappointments,” Sri Lanka coach added.

Graham Ford also believed that the same set of players would win them a lot of games in future. “Some of our players have played 20 – odd or fewer than 20 ODIs and once they get to 80, 90, 100 ODIs, these guys are going to win us a lot of games. That win was against the team everyone is talking about being favorites to win the tournament,” said Ford.

Sri Lanka squandered a big chance of qualifying to the semifinals by dropping catches at crucial junctures of the game. But Ford said that even to get to that stage where we looked like defending a modest total of 237 was a great achievement.

“The character that these guys continue to show is really exciting. If we get a bit of experience among the younger players and we continue to keep that fight – that kind of spirit is really important if we’re going to build and become a highly competitive team. We were trying to win, but I think there are other teams going back from the Champions Trophy with far less positives and far less to really get excited about than we have,” Ford believed.

Sri Lanka’s catching was horrendous throughout the tournament and they dropped 5 catches. They even focussed on that particular area during the pre-tournament camp at Pallekele. But Ford was highly optimistic of their fielding as well.

“The public probably don’t realise just how determined these guys are to try and improve,” Ford said. “Unfortunately our fielding let us down against Pakistan, but we started to look like a side that can field. I’ve always said it’s going to take time before we become a fielding unit that the rest of the world talks about. But there’s no doubt that there’s been an improvement in that area.”

Sri Lanka have been in the transition phase for so long and they have to start producing results soon if they are to have any chances of performing well at 2019 World Cup which will be held in England again.