Dasun Shanaka, the captain of Sri Lanka’s cricket team, said on Friday that a win in the Asia Cup would lift the spirits of cricket fans in the island country. It is going through its worst economic crisis. Because of political unrest in Sri Lanka, the six-country Twenty20 tournament will start on Saturday in the United Arab Emirates. Get ready for the First Asia Cup 2022 match between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan tonight. Read out the complete details down below with us!
First Asia Cup 2022 match between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan is tonight!
In the first game of the tournament, Sri Lanka will play Afghanistan. This will be a warm-up for the T20 World Cup. It will be held in Australia in October and November. In the past few months, Sri Lanka has had trouble with power outages and lack of food and fuel. However, in June, they beat Australia in a home series of one-day internationals. They also tied with Australia and Pakistan in Tests.
Shanaka said that playing at home would have been a huge advantage, but he also said that in the T20 format, there are no clear favourites. India and Pakistan are expected to play in the final of the tournament, but Sri Lanka could make sure that doesn’t happen. Wanindu Hasaranga’s leg spin was still important for the team in the white-ball series against Australia at home, and Shanaka said the team would rely on the all-rounder in the UAE.
Afghanistan just won all of their white-ball games against Zimbabwe. They have always played hard in international competitions and even caused a few upsets, but their captain, Mohammad Nabi, wants his team to be more consistent. Nabi insisted that his team is more than just a few stars like Rashid Khan. Instead, he said, the team works well as a whole. The third team in Group B is Bangladesh. Group A is made up of India, Pakistan, and Hong Kong.
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“Hosting this tournament in Sri Lanka would have favoured us more because the crowd support is there and playing in home conditions has a bigger advantage,” he said.
“When it comes to the favourites, India is a leading side at the moment but in T20 there are no favourites. On a day if we play good cricket, we can be the favourites as well.”
“Our main spinner Wanindu Hasaranga will definitely play a major role in this tour for us,” said Shanaka.
“We have played some good series in the last two-three months. What I trust the most is the process, so we are on the right track and hopefully we can clean the series here as well.”
“We have run out of steam in close games and this is what we thought about before coming here and God willing will try not to repeat our mistakes,” said Nabi.
“We came a week earlier for the Asia Cup to acclimatise and we will have a better tournament this time and try and move in the Super 4 stage.”
