Big Picture
The locals in Sri Lanka's southeast had been hoping for heavy rains to
rejuvenate their crops and refill their wells. The rain though, has been
in Colombo. Hambantota gets extra cricket instead. Given Sri Lanka have
now lost three on the trot at the venue, that may not be much of a
condolence prize.
Sri Lanka is often thought of as a tough team to beat at home,
particularly in limited-overs cricket. But since 2006, they have lost
seven bilateral ODI series at home to the six they have won. In the last
two years, they have also drawn against New Zealand and Bangladesh.
Pakistan now have the chance to inflict a successive ODI series loss on
the hosts, after South Africa beat them 2-1 last month. Angelo Mathews
already has one eye trained on the World Cup, and had said he would
experiment with Sri Lanka's combination in this series. But he will be
tempted to shelve those ambitions for now, and pick his strongest team.
Pakistan, meanwhile, are out to get silverware out of this tour. They
had seemed sunk on Saturday until two batsmen with fewer than 50 ODIs
between them put on a partnership worthy of seasoned one-day cricketers.
Perhaps the wisest thing about their 147-run stand was that neither
batsman seemed keen to rely on Shahid Afridi.
Saturday's was the kind of win that fills a batting unit with
confidence. If they can win a chase from five down, 160 adrift and the
required rate touching seven an over, they might feel anything is
possible. Moreover, Misbah-ul-Haq now seems to have some level-headed
company in the middle order. They will be without their other
middle-order anchor though, with Younis Khan returning home
due to personal reasons. They will also need to make do without ace
spinner Saeed Ajmal for one more match, but even without him, the
bowling and batting appears to have the depth and variety to deal with
whatever the temperamental Hambantota venue serves up on Tuesday.
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