Bring Sangakkara back – Mathews’s short-term fix

“People will want India to come in and thrash us, and all the pressure is off us.”

Angelo Mathews recognised that India is the strong favourite for the ICC Champions Trophy 2017 Group B game The Oval on Thursdayand also acknowledged that no one expected Sri Lanka to win the tournament. Playing on the ‘Sri Lanka are underdogs’ theme, he even joked that he wished Kumar Sangakkara would come out of retirement for the game.

“At the very first press conference, I said we are happy to walk in as the underdogs. I mean, no one really expects us to win the championship, which takes a lot of pressure out of the guys,” he stressed. “You’ve got to deal with the pressures. We always have pressures and you've just got to deal with it and be as a team. Yes, we are in the rebuilding phase for the past one or two years. We've had so many greats and they've retired. We are slowly rebuilding, but surely, we will come up with a good performance.”

Mathews was at a loss of words to explain the long period Sri Lanka has taken to cope with the retirements of Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene after the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 – it has won only 13 of 39 One-Day Internationals since then.

“It's a very hard question to answer,” he said. “I mean, it only comes with experience, and the guys are learning every single day. If you look at most of the guys, they haven't played a lot of international cricket. The more you play, the more you learn, and we've learnt right through our careers.

“It's just that we've got to keep learning every single day, and everyone has to step up with their roles because we can't just expect things to fall in line. We've got to make it happen, and we've got to make it happen soon.”

One way to do that, at least for the short-term, would be to abandon caution and play with complete freedom. It was an approach suggested by Sangakkara, and Mathews agreed.

“I think that is our brand of cricket, being aggressive and positive, thinking that there is no expectations,” said Mathews. “People will want India to come in and thrash us, and it's just all the pressure is off us. We just have to go out there, just express ourselves. As Kumar has rightly said, coming from the legend himself, we've got to go out there and express ourselves and be aggressive.”

Talking about Sangakkara, the Sri Lankan champion has not only kept himself active in the English county circuit, but has also in excellent form of late. His last five scores for Surrey – which has The Oval as its home ground – are 124*, 114, 120, 200 and 84.

Mathews, only semi-jokingly, said he was very tempted to request Sangakkara to join the Sri Lankan ranks. “I always asked him that,” said Mathews. “Even a couple days ago, I was asking him ‘can you come and play for us in this game’. He's been in absolute form. He's been in form ever since he started playing, to be honest.

“Yes, he's had a dream career, and it's unfortunate that we don't have him anymore, but he's always willing to help us. He's always having chats to us on how we should play on these conditions, especially. It's his home ground. And he's had a lot of chats to all the younger players, including myself. Yes, it's unfortunate we don't have him, but, yes, it's very tempting to call him back again.”

On the subject of Sri Lanka’s poor over-rate in its opening game against South Africa, which led to Upul Tharanga, the stand-in captain, being suspended for two matches, Mathews was unsympathetic.

“The over-rate was pathetic. I call it pathetic because the whole team and the captain was warned several times, and there's no excuse at all but to take responsibility for that because nobody else can take responsibility on it,” said Mathews. “The whole team is responsible, including the captain. You have to feel for the captain. I think it's a very hard job on the field, and he has to look into so many things – tactics, bowling changes, field setting. So the rest of the players have to support him. You see most of the teams playing with four seamers, and they have not had an issue. We played only three, and we've had an issue. So that has been addressed, and it will not happen again.”