Windies eye retribution after narrow opening defeat

HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka: Sri Lanka have the familiarity of conditions and after a hard-earned win in the first One-day International (ODI) of the three-match series, they will be looking to seal the series against West Indies on Wednesday (today).

The series give very little time for teams to recover from defeats and put their game together. But fortunately for West Indies, despite coming up short in the series opener, they had plenty of positives to take from the game, making the process slightly easier.

West Indies’ batting would largely please them, despite the failures of the middle order, with most of the top four coming good, before the lower order showed a lot of grit in laying the finishing touches to an innings that had lost significant steam.

Their bowlers couldn’t quite haul them to victory, but they pushed Sri Lanka to the limit, making the home team earn their win. Sri Lanka did a lot of things right, most notably the number of contributions they received from all around the batting order. Now, the key for them would be to retain that level of consistency and seal the series – something they haven’t been quite adept at doing in the recent past. But with the familiarity of home, and a hard-earned win to boot, they sure do have the belief that it can be done. The weather will be partly sunny and pleasant. A breezy afternoon is expected in Hambantota. This will be the first ODI at the Rajapaksa stadium in over two years.