Sri Lanka want to prove they’re not intimidated by Australia on their bleak winless tour, coach Graham Ford says.
Ford says his team know they’re a better one-day outfit than they showed when hammered by 107 runs in Friday’s opening match at the MCG.
But the coach admits improvement in key areas is needed for Sunday’s second one-dayer in Adelaide in the best of five series.
“We want to get out and play some good cricket and show that we’re a good team, the next game is really, really important,” Ford said.
He dismissed the public debate about Australia’s so-called second-stringers, saying the tourists didn’t underestimate their foe in the MCG loss.
“We always knew we were up against some high-class one-day cricketers,” Ford said.
“You just can’t afford to be off your game at all against players of that calibre.
“I don’t think anything has changed, I don’t think there is any sort of intimidation, we know we’re up against a good team.”
Sri Lanka marred the MCG opener with wayward bowling as Australia amassed 5-305.
“We know we’re a better side than that in the field,” Ford said.
“We dished up some fairly easy boundary balls which released pressure for the batters.
“The game plan is to try to build pressure and when you’re releasing it every couple of overs it puts us on the back foot.
“The new field-place restrictions, we found that a little bit hard and maybe the fielders didn’t support the bowlers as well as they could have.
“The problem is we did just give away too many easy boundary balls.”
The visitors were then never in the run chase and were ultimately all out for 198 in 40 overs in a capitulation that included three run outs.
“When you’re chasing a score like that, you just can’t have the guts of your batting taken out through run outs,” Ford said.
“The pleasing thing is that quite a number of our batsmen look in good form and played really nicely but to give away three wickets to run outs makes the job almost impossible.”